Just Another Normal Thursday
by The Eclectic Bookworm
Summary: Matt doesn't do one night stands, so he's taking River out on a date. Rose travels with John in a strictly platonic sense, but their friends sent them on a couples cruise instead of Brazil. Thursday will prove to be extremely interesting, and whatever comes after might just be even better. Multi-chapter. Ten/Rose, Eleven/River. Complete!
1. On Monday, Matt Might Be A Maniac

**Seeing as this is the first chapter and the premise is a teensy bit risque, I ask you to bear with me. There's going to be a lot of fluff coming up soon.**

**Read at least the first two chapters? Pretty please?**

* * *

It was a remarkably sunny Monday morning, so sunny that the pavement outside the window Matt Smith was sitting near was practically sparkling. But he didn't have much time or patience to spare for sparkly pavement, because he was sitting up in bed with the sheets around his waist and trying not to completely blow his top while talking to this ridiculously arrogant young woman he had never met in his life.

"What, so you're telling me you've never had a one-night stand before?" she was asking now, examining her nail polish. "One's chipped. And here I was being so careful."

"Never," said Matt stubbornly. "This was a mistake."

The woman looked up from her nails and rolled her eyes. "Oh, honestly. I came into the pub _looking _for a one-night stand, and you practically threw yourself at me."

"I was drunk!" protested Matt. "Completely drunk!"

"Can you remember everything?" asked the woman with a smug grin.

"With great detail and clarity," muttered Matt reluctantly, a blush starting at the bridge of his nose as he recalled some of the events of the previous night. "Okay, so I only had a glass. It was Rose who was drunk."

"Rose?" asked the woman with amusement.

"My friend. Completely drunk. She was trying to be 'free and uninhibited'. Long story. And that is _so not the point, _um, um, what's your name?"

"Why should I tell you?" the woman replied, arching an eyebrow.

"Because we just-just, um, uh-"

"Shagged," said the woman bluntly, looking up from her nails. "If that makes you blush, try _fornicated. _Or _copulated. _Ooo, you have a _delightful _blush." She leaned forward to kiss him. He backed away and fell off of the bed. "What, never shagged a lady before?"

Matt stood up indignantly, realized he no longer had the covering of the sheet, and ducked behind the bed again. "No!" he told the side of the bed, avoiding the woman's gaze. "I do _not _do one-night stands. I do _not_-um-"

"Shag?"

"Yes, that. I don't do that with anyone who doesn't matter to me."

"Tough," replied the woman. "You just did it with me."

"Yeah? Well, then I'm going to have to get to know you."

"You are completely ridiculous," the woman told him, scooting over to the side of the bed. He stared at her bare ankles so that he wouldn't have to look at certain other uncovered parts. She was pretty, yes, but he was not going to look straight into the eyes of someone he didn't know who was completely and utterly naked without any modesty. He found it both slightly unnerving and rather attractive.

"We," Matt told the woman's ankles, "are going out for dinner this Thursday."

"And why would I do that?" the woman replied coolly. "For all I know you could be a homicidal maniac."

"And yet you-ah, er-"

"Shagged you," finished the woman. "Honestly, how old are you?"

"Yeah! You did it with a homicidal maniac!"

"So you're saying that you _are _a homicidal maniac?"

"No! _What is your name?_"

"Why should I tell you? We barely know each other."

"_Aaaargh!_"

* * *

"Sho wod your bashiclly shaying 's thad the reashon your lade 's thad y' had a one-night shtand wth rand'm w'man 'n a pub?" said Rose Tyler through a mouthful of chips.

"Sorry, Rose, I couldn't hear you over the disgusting sound of the chewed food moving around in your mouth," said Matt, holding his menu in front of his face.

Rose rolled her eyes, swallowed, took a swig from her soda can, and repeated, "So what you're basically saying is that the reason you're late is that you had a one-night stand with a random woman in a pub?"

"Pretty much," Matt replied sheepishly. "I wasn't intending to be late for our chip date, but it took me a bit to get a cab back home and pull myself together. How'd your night go?"

"Well, considering I was left alone at the pub…" muttered Rose sourly.

"You weren't alone, Rose, you had John and Jack and Amy and Rory! And Donna. Can't forget Donna, or she'll slap me. It was a group outing, remem-"

"Amy and Rory were snogging each other in a corner," Rose interrupted. "Jack was flirting with someone-he calls it 'chatting' but you know Jack. Donna was yelling at some guy who'd tried to flirt with her. Honestly, I think she should get a more noticeable engagement ring. So that left John to take me home, and for all I know I could have snogged _him _and he's just too embarrassed to mention it. You know what John's like."

"If he wasn't the way he was, Rose, you wouldn't fancy him. 'S why Mickey and you broke up, you know," Matt commented sagely.

"You have vinegar on your nose," Rose informed him, dabbing at his nose with her napkin. "And if you're such an expert, then why aren't you still with Idris?"

"That was a highly dangerous and extremely unstable relationship!" Matt said indignantly. "You can't possibly expect me to go back to her!"

"I thought you liked her?"

"Idris _bites!_"

Rose laughed, then groaned. "_Damn, _I have a hangover. You should've taken me home, Matt. I bet I snogged John."

"Want me to call and ask?" Matt asked casually.

"Go ahead. He'll tell you. He likes you."

"Course he likes me. He's my best mate! Mind you, I still find it a bit creepy that you fancy my best mate and talk to _me _about it, but I'm getting over it. Slowly. Slo-o-o-owly." Matt pulled out his phone and then added, "Can I go outside?"

"Sure, Matt, why the hell are you asking my permission? Go ahead." Rose took another chip.

* * *

Matt left the shop and watched Rose through the window. She really was adorable when she was eating chips. Mind, she was strictly off limits seeing as she was his childhood best mate. They'd tried a few dates, but when they'd kissed Rose had immediately apologized and explained that she was head over heels in love with Mickey.

Of course, this was before she'd started traveling with John Noble.

They'd met at Matt's birthday party, and Matt had introduced all of his new friends to Rose, who he had known since they were kids. She'd met Jack and Rory there, and really hit it off with Donna, but when she had looked at John, Matt had seen something new in her eyes that he had never seen before.

And then they were going all over the world. He'd show up at Rose's door and take her off to some crazy place. Venice, Paris, Manhattan, anywhere and everywhere. Matt, being a casual observer when it came to matters of romance, could literally _feel _the spark between them.

* * *

"John?" said Matt brightly into the phone.

John groaned.

"Sorry, did I wake you up?"

"No, you bugger, I just groan into phones for fun," yawned John. "Sod off. I'm going back to bed. I got to bed late last night."

"Did Rose snog you?" asked Matt curiously. "I know you took her home."

"No, Matt, she didn't _snog _me, because she was too _drunk._ Which, by the way, should have been _your _responsibility to take care of, but instead you go and snog River Song in the corner."

"River Song?" said Matt sharply. "Is that her name?"

"Why-oh-_Matt, _you _didn't_," John groaned. "River's completely unreachable. No way are you going to win her over."

"How d'you know that I'm going to try and win her over?" demanded Matt into the phone.

"Matt, you never shag someone without having a real romantic connection with them. Now you're going to try and rectify that by taking her out on a few dates, and that is _so _not going to work."

"And how do you know her name?" Matt asked sharply. "She didn't tell me."

"Likes her mystery, River," said John cheerfully. He suddenly sounded a bit more awake. "I went out with her once. Me, her, and Donna. Donna got lost in CAL Library and River helped me find her."

"That is _so_ not a date," muttered Matt.

"It was! I asked her out at the end of it but all she said was 'Sorry, sweetie, I'm holding out for a good man.' And I was _very _insulted. You can't tell, but through the phone I have an angry face on. And now she's _Donna's _best mate, but she never goes out with anyone on more than one date. Except when Donna drags her to double-date."

"Right, thanks for nothing," said Matt. "See you whenever."

"Same, Matt. Bye."

Matt slipped his phone into his pocket and headed back into the chip shop, where Rose was finishing off the last few chips.

"Sho wod he shay?" Rose asked.

"Sorry?"

Rose swallowed again. "So what'd he say?"

"You didn't snog him."

Rose looked relieved for a second before gasping, "But what if he's lying? Oh my god, Matt, I bet I snogged him and he hates me now! I bet I snogged him and he's too embarrassed to even look at me! I bet I-"

"Breathe, Rose," said Matt patiently.

Rose took a few great gulps of air. "I'm sorry," she sighed. "I'm a bit of a mess."

" 'S my fault," Matt mumbled.

"No-" Rose began, but then thought better of it and replied with a little laugh, "Yes. Matt, I bet that whole 'free and uninhibited' thing probably didn't impress John at all."

"Getting drunk isn't likely to impress anyone._ I_ bet you vomited on him."

"Oh my god! Matt, you have to call and as-"

"_No."_

* * *

"A _one-night stand?_" said Amelia Pond incredulously on Tuesday, her feet on a coffee table littered with pamphlets about weddings and real estate. "_You?_" She shifted a bit on the sofa so that she was snuggled into the arm. The telly was on. Neither of them were watching it.

"Yes, yes, shut up, I've already heard that from Rose, please just shut up," Matt muttered. "And I have a date with her day after tomorrow."

"A _date? You?" _gasped Amy with a bit of a mischievous grin.

"Now I know you're messing with me, Pond. You know that I am _perfectly capable _of going out with any woman-"

"Pfft. You avoid us 'gentler sex' like we have the plague." Amy picked up a pamphlet about wedding dresses and threw it at the wall of her flat. "Mind, you'd be saving some poor woman from having to pick out a stupid wedding dress. Did you know that all Rory has to do is choose a tux? And half of the things I try on make me look like a candle."

Matt laughed. "Weddings are easy! If I had to get married, my bride could wear whatever she wanted, 'cause she'd look lovely in whatever she chose."

"You are a hopeless romantic," snorted Amy. "Love isn't like that."

"I am so not a hopeless romantic!"

"You serenaded every single girl you fancied at one in the morning, and every single girl thought you were an idiot. You're behind the times, Matt."

"Nope, I am not," Matt replied stubbornly.

"You kiss people on both cheeks when you're saying hello! No sane person does that!"

"I already _clarified, _Amy, I'm not quite sane," said Matt as if Amy was an idiot for having not realized it sooner. "I'm Rory's best man at the wedding, right?"

"I know you're at least one of the groomsmen."

"I should be the best man! I'm so perfect it's not even human!"

"Oh, you aren't human, all right," Amy muttered, picking up another pamphlet and scanning it. " 'S bloody annoying how not-human you are."

Matt rolled his eyes. "You're just jealous."

"You wish."

* * *

"Is she hot?" asked Jack Harkness on Wednesday, leaning across the dining room table in Ianto's flat. Matt, who had just taken a bite of his tomato-and-vanilla-icing sandwich (he had always had rather strange tastes), choked, and it took him a few minutes to recover.

"Jack, what sort of a question is that?" he sputtered. "_Is she hot-_you can't just ask me that when I'm taking a bite of sandwich! I nearly died!"

"Suuure," Jack replied with a bit of an eye roll. "You nearly died. I can really tell, Matt. You really look like you nearly died. Anyway, you didn't answer my question. Try swallowing that first." Matt obliged, his eyes slightly narrowed with annoyance. "Is she hot?" Jack repeated.

Matt's ears went a bit red. "I'm not-I don't-_yes,_" he conceded ungracefully. "She is. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up doing it with her-"

"We aren't in middle school anymore-oh, wait, different countries-we aren't in _secondary school _anymore. Just say _shagged._"

Matt groaned. "That is really a rather unattractive word."

"Shagged," said Jack in annoyance. "Shagged shagged shagged shagged. HEY IANTO!" he yelled in the direction of his boyfriend's bedroom. "SHAGGED! Get over it!"

Matt's face had gone the reddish-white color of his tomato-and-vanilla-icing-sandwich.

* * *

**Reviews? Thoughts? **

**Next chapter: Rose gets driven to the airport in her jim jams**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	2. On Wednesday, Rose Eats Tesco's Cookies

**The chapters are going to alternate between Matt and Rose. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

"Bananas," groaned Rose in annoyance, glancing at the shopping list and starting to steer the cart towards Aisle Five. "John, why the hell do you need bananas if we're going to go to Brazil? I bet you they have loads of bananas in Brazil."

"Oh, please," John snorted in response. "Our flights always get delayed, or we get on the wrong connecting flight, or something like that. I want to be prepared in case we end up in Rome or Hollywood or something. Now if you don't mind, kindly get some bananas." Rose laughed reluctantly and conceded, letting him steer the cart instead.

They were doing some last-minute grocery shopping before their trip to Brazil the next day, seeing as it was always important that John had spare bananas and Rose had a packet of chips. Not to mention that Rose always picked up the tabloids so that she and John could make fun of them on the plane ride.

"Aaand that's nearly it," said Rose cheerfully. "Just cauliflower. _Cauliflower?"_

"Nah, that's for Clara," John explained. "I wanted to get her something nice. Flowers."

"John, a cauliflower is…umm…albino broccoli."

_"__Albino broccoli?"_ said John, sounding suddenly intrigued. "Forget the bananas, I _have_ to see this!" He then grabbed Rose's hand ("Oh!") and towed her down the produce aisle until they reached the cauliflower. "Brilliant!"

"What planet have you been living on?" giggled Rose.

"Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the universe. You should visit. It's fantastic." John grinned and picked up a cauliflower. "So this is the so-called 'albino broccoli', Rose? Why d'you think they call it cauliflower? It's not a flower, and it most certainly doesn't resemble a collie. Very odd. Anyway, we need to get Clara flowers!"

"Why are you suddenly getting Clara flowers?" asked Rose suspiciously, her heart thudding a bit too fast.

"She _did _pay for this trip to Brazil, even booked a special flight and everything," John replied. "I figure I owe her flowers."

"John," said Rose, amused, "you do realize that she's going to think that you're getting her flowers because you fancy her?"

"Oh. Yeah. Maybe not flowers, then."

Rose rolled her eyes and took the cauliflower from John. "Tell you what. We'll get her cauliflowers."

"Isn't the plural of _cauliflower _just _cauliflower_?"

"I dunno. Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Anyway! We really ought to finish shopping, seeing as tomorrow we're leaving for _Brazil!_" Rose sang out happily, throwing her arms around John in an impromptu hug. "Oh my god, Brazil! This is going to be brilliant!"

"Course it is," John replied cheerfully. "Brazil. I love Brazil. I went once when I was eight, but it's so much more fun going places with you. You get all excited."

Rose laughed.

* * *

Two hours later, John was watching telly aimlessly on Rose's sofa while she packed.

"This is plotless," he complained to Rose. "This whole show, it's completely and utterly plotless. Just a lot of snogging and flirting and drinking."

"Who are you to judge it?" Rose replied in amusement, wadding up a pink hoodie and stuffing it into her tote bag for the Rose-Is-Going-To-Brazil-So-Let's-Have-A-Poorly-Planned-Slumber-Party that Clara was hosting. John was extremely cute when he was complaining. His nose wrinkled a certain way and his mouth got this _curl… _"I'd like to see you try and write television shows."

"I would write _amazing_ television shows! You'd watch them all the time and be jealous that you couldn't write television shows like me!"

"Riiight. D'you think I should pack a jacket?"

"Probably. We might end up in Siberia for a week like last time." John changed the channel, pulled a face, changed it again, and groaned. "Urgh. Who watches this sort of stuff?"

"John, couldn't you just turn off the telly?" Rose tried to zip up her tote bag, failed, and tugged harder. "Damn it."

"Here. I'm an expert at backpack zipping. Or tote bag zipping." John slid off the couch onto the floor and sat down next to Rose, tugging at the zipper. "There we go!"

"My hero," teased Rose, giving him a light kiss on the cheek. His cheeks heated up. She dared to hope.

* * *

"You _devil!_" gasped Amy dramatically when the four of them (Amy, Rose, Donna, and Clara) were gathered around Clara's dining room table. Matt was busying himself with an enormous plate of jammie dodgers in the living room, seeing as when Clara had a sleepover with her girls and he had no excuse to leave the Oswald family's house he ate jammie dodgers instead. Clara always said that it was a wonder that her brother didn't weigh five hundred pounds. "You kissed him?"

"On the cheek, Amy!" said Rose hastily, blushing furiously. "On the cheek!"

"Still, it's a step up," said Clara cheerfully, taking a chocolate chip cookie from the plate in the middle of the table. "Mmm. Brilliant cookies, Donna."

"_Tesco's_ cookies, Clara," Donna replied.

"Clara?" came Matt's nervous voice from the corner. "Clara, what day is it?"

"Wednesday, Matt," Clara replied. "It isn't Thursday. It wasn't Thursday yesterday, and it's going to be Thursday tomorrow. Keep track."

Matt groaned and did a face-plant into the jammie dodgers. One flew across the room into Rose's lap. She picked it up and took a bite.

"He's in a right state," Clara muttered to her girlfriends. "Don't have the faintest idea why."

"Isn't it because he's going to be going out with his one-night stand tomorrow?" Amy asked.

"A one-night stand?" said Donna and Clara together.

"Aaaamy!" groaned Matt from the jammie dodgers.

"Isn't it only a one-night stand if you don't intend to see them again? Hence the 'one night' bit?" asked Donna in amusement.

"Yeah, well, he's _Matt,_" Amy replied, as if this solved everything.

"Oi!" snapped Matt, jerking his (now rather crumb-covered) face out of the jammie dodgers. "He can hear you!"

"Yeah, well, we're girls! We're cliché and catty! Rowrrr!" Donna made claws with her hands and sent the rest of the girls into hysterics. Matt rolled his eyes and exited, making sure to pick up some stray jammie dodgers from the carpet and put them back on his plate.

"So, Amy, how's it going in paradise?" asked Rose, taking another bite of her jammie dodger.

"I dunno," Amy replied dully. "Okay, I guess. Rory's nice."

"Nice?" Donna repeated warily. "Ooh, nice isn't always good. I thought _Lance _was nice."

"Lance was a certified Grade A psychopath!" said Amy indignantly. "You can't compare him with Rory!"

"You never know," said Donna darkly. "Men can be trouble."

"Even John?" asked Clara innocently.

Donna snorted. "He's my little brother. I'm biased." She took a cookie and frowned at it. "Needs milk. You know what? I think I'm going to pour us some milk. Milk and cookies. Didn't I say we were cliché?"

Rose laughed softly.

* * *

"You awake?" Rose whispered to Donna, who was closest to her. The lights were out, but she couldn't bring herself to go to sleep.

Donna uttered a soft snore in response. Rose sighed and buried her face in her sleeping bag, letting herself think about John and Brazil and how much fun they were going to have.

* * *

Thursday morning Rose was woken by Matt tripping over her sleeping bag and falling on top of Donna's. She groaned, then jerked her head up. "What time is it?" she demanded in a high voice.

"Don't worry about it!" said Matt hastily, sitting up. "John called five minutes ago. Said he just picked up your stuff from your flat and he's coming over to drive you to the airport."

"Matt, you _idiot!_" Donna shouted in exasperation, hurrying over and pushing him off of her sleeping bag.

Rose suddenly realized that John was going to see her in her pajamas, something that she had tried to avoid happening for the past two years that they'd known each other. She jumped up, still in her sleeping bag, and ran to her small tote bag of slumber party clothing.

The first thing she found was her watch. 10:01. She really should have left earlier; the idea was for her to leave at eight.

"Don't worry about it, Rose!" said Amy from the table, where she was eating breakfast fully dressed. _Wow. Everyone's dressed but me. This is gonna look great to John. _"He said that you'd probably overslept and he'll just drive you to the airport in your jim jams."

"Does he have keys to your flat?" gasped Clara dramatically through a mouthful of toast. "You bad girl, Rose!"

Rose didn't have time to respond. She donned her watch and pulled out her spare comb, frantically running it through her hair. It snagged. She muttered a few choice expletives under her breath.

The doorbell rang. She groaned and found the wadded-up pink hoodie, pulling it over her tank top and putting the hood up so John couldn't see her bed head. The hood fell back down as she pulled on her trainers.

"Rose?" called John from the entryway. "Hello?"

Rose raced to the door with her tote bag over her shoulder, yanking it open and completely missing John's silly little grin at the sight of her. "Hello! Sorry-overslept-sorry. Here we go, right?"

"Allons-y!" said John, smiling broadly. Rose waved a hasty goodbye to her girls, who chorused "By-ye!" like they always did when she was going traveling. She didn't hear their excited giggles as she shut the door.

* * *

Rose watched John the entire time they were in the car. He was extremely adorable when he was talking at twenty miles a minute and paying attention to the road.

Sort of.

"And then-_whoa-_then Jack wants-_ack!_\- he wants to know if-_ooo, that was much too close-_if the girl has a mobile, so that he can-_oh dear-_he can call her and ask about-_oh my-_"

Rose laughed softly. "Tell you what. I'll talk and you drive."

"I don't need to-" John swerved and narrowly avoided a pole. "Okay, fine. Talk."

"Did Matt tell you about River?"

John laughed. "Yeah. D'you think that it'll work out?"

"I've not met River, but according to Donna, she's not exactly Matt's type," Rose responded. "You know, pretty, shy, quiet? She's gorgeous, sassy, and demanding."

John laughed even harder and nearly drove into the side of a building. Rose yelped. "I can't wait to see how long it takes for him to give up."

* * *

They were late for their plane. After they got through security and had checked in all of their baggage, John took off at a run with Rose clinging to his hand.

"Gate Seven, right?" he asked Rose nervously. "Gate Seven?"

"Yeah, that's right," Rose replied. _Or was it Gate Six? _she wondered nervously.

They checked their boarding passes. The flight attendant directed them to Gate Six. Rose rolled her eyes. John blamed Rose. They checked their boarding passes at Gate Six. They boarded. Rose collapsed into a seat. John followed suit.

* * *

It was an hour-long flight, which Rose found slightly odd (seeing as they were flying across the Atlantic and it should have taken longer) but she didn't comment on it to John because she was too busy trying to make him laugh with tabloid titles.

"_It's Not My Baby!_" she read in a faux-horrified voice. "_Hollywood Scandal._ Blimey, lot of scandals. Ooh, and some bloke's having a fiasco at Miami Beach. Tried to host a party and ended up tied to his own diving board."

"Not laughing," John told her stubbornly, his voice quivering and his mouth twitching.

"_They're Done. _Well, why do I care about how done they are? Maybe then I don't have to read about how cute a couple they are every time I open up one of these."

"Not laughing."

"_20 Pages of Oscar Gowns. _That's right, because my life is so boring that all I have to do is look at pictures. I know how to _read, _for god's sake. I don't need a picture book."

"Not laughing."

"_My Sweet and Sexy Marriage: I Want to Be a Hot Wife. _I think-"

John started laughing so hard that his bag of airplane pretzels spilled all over his front and he didn't even bother to pick them up. Rose laughed as well, simply because his reaction was so adorably explosive that she couldn't resist joining in.

_"__Landing in Paris in ten minutes. Please prepare to board the exclusive couples' cruise,"_ came a voice over the loudspeaker, and both John and Rose jerked to attention.

"_What?"_

"Oh," groaned Rose. "We should never have let Clara buy the tickets."

* * *

**I think that I'm going to hold off on posting the next chapter (including paisley bow ties, mini-golf, and vanilla frappuchinos) until I get at least two reviews. Pretty please?**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	3. On Thursday, Matt Buys River Daffodils

**One review and one favorite...close enough.**

* * *

Matt tied his bow tie. Then he untied it. Then he retied it. Then he threw it onto his bed and picked up a horrifying paisley one instead. Then he threw the paisley one out the window (oops) and picked up a soft-ish blue one that Idris had hated.

"Are you done yet?" Clara called from the dining room. "You know that you're picking River up at five for dinner."

"I'm not taking her to _dinner,_" Matt called back haughtily in the direction of his closed bedroom door. "I'm taking her out for miniature golf and pizza. It's going to be lots of fun. Dates are like that, right, Clara? Lots of fun?"

Clara made the little squeaking-inhale sound that meant that she was swallowing a laugh before responding, "You're doomed, clever boy."

Matt rolled his eyes. "I am so not doomed! I picked out my best suspenders!"

His little sister went into extremely audible hysterics that made Matt jerk the door open and glare at her dramatically. This didn't really help Clara, who clutched the door frame and laughed harder.

He decided to nix the soft-ish blue bow tie and wear the red one that he'd started out with in the first place.

* * *

Matt drove to River's flat mostly from memory, but also with the aid of Google Maps. For about half of the ride he was checking his hair in the rearview mirror. (Later he would find it a wonder that he didn't drive off a cliff.) From what he recalled of River Song, she was extremely attractive. What she'd seen in him he had no idea, but if it had been his looks it surely wouldn't hurt to be in tip-top shape.

He stopped off at the florist's and bought River a bouquet of daffodils for reasons that he thought would make interesting conversation. He made sure that they were nice ones.

Then he was there, and his heart was thudding in his chest at twice the normal speed, and his cheeks were heating up. He took a moment to collect himself before ringing the doorbell.

"Yowzah," said Matt. _Did I really say that? What the hell is wrong with me?_

River was wearing a black dress with a lot of sparkles. (Seriously, what _was_ it with women and sparkles?) And it hugged her hips and ended just a bit above her ankles and it had some very nice buttons.

Also, she had on heels.

Matt supposed he should have told her that they were going mini-golfing.

"Can we get this over with?" she said with annoyance. "The point of a one night stand is that it's _one night_. No strings attached."

"Yeah, right, sorry," Matt replied sheepishly. "I brought you daffodils."

"Daffodils?" River repeated, arching an eyebrow in that way he was starting to learn that only she could really pull off.

"Seeing as you probably get roses a lot," Matt explained. "Seeing as you're really pretty."

River blushed slightly, but it was so small a difference that Matt wasn't sure if he was imagining it. "Thank you," she said both softly and grudgingly, taking the flowers and setting them down on a conveniently placed little table next to the door. Matt wondered if she had that table there for the express purpose of putting down flowers before dates. "So where are we going?"

"Mini-golf!" said Matt excitedly. He saw the change in River's expression and quickly grabbed her hand, hoping to avert a crisis in the making. "Geronimo!"

They took off toward Matt's car. Really it was mostly Matt towing River to the car, but it was still fun. River was smiling reluctantly by the time Matt opened the door for her, but she also looked rather dizzy from running in heels.

* * *

They drove in silence until Matt decided to turn on the radio. This proved to be a mistake, as whenever an ABBA song came on he would sing along softly to it. And on this particular station they played nearly _all _ABBA songs.

"You're a fan?" asked River, sounding a little amused.

"Sort of. Not really. Kind of. My-um-my sister is. It sticks in your head. Like Silly Putty. Is Silly Putty sticky? I suppose that that wasn't the best comparison. I should've said superglue, but that's really too cliché in my opinion. River, are you cliché?"

He expected her to act affronted at this sort of question, or laugh, or ask what the word meant, like so many other women that he had met before. But instead River smirked and replied, "If I was, I wouldn't know, and if I wasn't, I wouldn't say. Rather a personal question for a first date, don't you think? I haven't even properly introduced myself yet."

"Do you intend to?" asked Matt, switching off the radio.

"Beside the point," River responded. "Are you any good at mini-golf?"

"I'm brilliant," Matt told her proudly.

* * *

He wasn't.

On Hole One, Matt hit the spinny thing on the windmill that he couldn't remember the name of and it bounced off and hit him in the face and he fell down in surprise. River looked like she wanted to laugh but was holding herself back.

"What's the spinny thing called?" Matt asked River as soon as he sat up.

She grabbed his hands in hers and pulled him up with surprising strength. Her eyes were sparkling with mirth. Matt was starting to like her. "Do you know, I'm not quite sure. And here I am with a doctorate."

"In what?" asked Matt with interest.

"Archaeology," replied River casually, swinging her golf club quite well considering that she was in a dress and heels. A hole-in-one. Matt groaned dramatically.

She won every single hole after that except for the giant dragon, mostly because Matt decided to yell "Don't choke!" in her ear right before she hit the golf ball. Right after that she rapped his knees with her club.

* * *

They talked over pizza at a small restaurant that Matt had always found great.

"What's your name?" River asked him suddenly. She was neatly eating pizza with a fork and knife. It was extremely cute. "I'd forgotten that I didn't know your name."

"I didn't tell you my _name?_" groaned Matt. "Wow. You must _really _fancy me now. I've forgotten to introduce myself." He stuck out his hand. River looked at it and prodded it with her fork. He giggled (oh no did I really do that _damn _it) and withdrew his hand. "Matt Smith. Doctor of a lot of things. I have a friend who's also doctor of a lot of things. But he was a doctor first. _Well, _I have eleven other friends. One of them is still studying now. Peter. I'm the Eleventh Doctor in our little group. You met John? He's the Tenth. I could go on for a bit, but it would get boring. I talk too much."

"I hadn't noticed," River said with a smile. "My name's Mel-River. Song. River Song."

"Mel-River?" Matt teased lightly.

River swallowed hard. "No. Not Mel-River. River. Just River. Sorry."

"Just-River-Sorry," said Matt, "d'you want to go out on another date with me next Thursday?"

"Are these dates romantic or platonic?" River asked.

"Frankly, I've not the slightest idea," Matt told him. "But we might want to hold off on the snogging for a bit."

River looked at him and opened her mouth, her eyes still sparkly and adorable, and Matt's heart started to thud again. But then something seemed to close, and she said flatly, "No. Sorry. I can't. You know, the whole _one night stand _thing?"

"Oh," said Matt. "Oh. Okay."

* * *

Matt drove River home in silence. He felt horrible and awkward, because she was just like all the others. Just a random girl. Why the hell had he expected her to be more?

"I'm too romantic," he mumbled to himself.

"Sorry?" said River softly from the passenger seat.

"Nothing."

* * *

He didn't walk her to the door.

* * *

The next day, Friday, Matt walked down to a Starbucks and ordered a bagel and cream cheese. He was feeling extremely sulky and sat down in front of a newspaper-reading stranger, who shrieked and spilled her drink all over both of them when she jumped up.

Matt's head jerked up. The newspaper was discarded. River Song was staring at him incredulously.

"Sorry!" she gasped, completely out of her element, makeup-free, wearing a black turtleneck and jeans and ratty Converses, her untamable hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail. Somehow she looked much more human and _much_ more beautiful.

"Hi," said Matt bashfully, his heart fluttering.

"Hi," River echoed with a hesitant grin. Then, "What're you doing at my Starbucks?"

"This is _my _Starbucks," Matt told her. "I _always _go here."

River laughed, not bothering to throw her head back and arch her neck spectacularly like she had done on the ill-fated first date. For the first time since Matt had met her, she wasn't dressed up or naked or made up."That's nice. Is this your attempt at a second date?"

"I have no clue," Matt told her. "I came down here for bagels and sulking about this _extremely_ pretty girl who didn't want to go on a second date with me. Then you show up and spill iced tea on me-"

"It's not iced tea," River told him. "It's a decaf vanilla frappucino. It's delicious. And it's on your shirt. And I'm _thirsty,_" she added rather petulantly. "Can you buy me another one?"

"How about this?" Matt asked, suddenly coming up with an idea. "I pay for your frappucino, and you go out with me on Thursday."

River smiled broadly.

"Come on," coaxed Matt, taking hold of both of her hands. They were very soft. "Come on, Song. Go out with me this Thursday."

"Fiiine," River groaned dramatically, but she was grinning too much to make her "reluctant" surrender believable. "You win. It doesn't have to be just a one-night stand."

"YES!" shouted Matt, punching the air, River's hands clutched in his. She laughed again as he hastily pulled his hands back down and apologized, even though she didn't really seem to mind.

* * *

He bought her a slice of coffee cake. She ate it neatly along with her frappucino.

"Can I try some?" Matt asked hopefully. River looked up with a surprised expression and he elaborated. "I've never had one before and you said it was good and I can get another straw if you want and are you laughing?"

River giggled. "You are unbelievably adorable, Matt, has anyone ever told you that? Go get a straw."

He did. He had a bit of a spring in his step. Even though their relationship was a little bit weird, _she thought that he was adorable._

They were very careful not to knock foreheads when they were sharing River's frappucino. It could have been romantic, but it wasn't. River was too careful to stop drinking whenever he bent to take a sip.

* * *

River walked him home.

"This is your place?" she said in surprise. "It's _big._"

"Yeah, it's great," Matt said proudly. "I love it. My home. Mine and Clara Oswald's. I'm in a bit of a financial situation," he added, trying to explain as little as possible, "which means that I'm still saving for a house and have to live with my-um-my little sister."

As always, River defied his expectations by completely ignoring his last sentence and saying, "So we're on for next Thursday?"

"We're on for next Thursday," Matt said happily. "I'll see you around, then."

River smiled broadly.

* * *

"John?" Matt said as soon as he was in his bedroom with his mobile raised to his ear.

"Matt Smith, if you were a part of this evil plot I swear on Rassilon I'm going to kill you," John replied automatically.

"Sorry, what?" said Matt.

"CARROTS!" shouted John. "BLOODY CARROTS! IF I SEE ANY MORE CARROTS I'M GOING TO BREAK SOMETHING!"

"Right, mate," said Matt, rather confused and slightly amused at the same time.

"Baby-blue shirts and carrot hair and CARROTS! _What _Rose saw in that _stupid_ carrot I have _no _idea!"

"O-kay."

"Did you send Rose and me on a couples cruise?" John demanded.

"What? Me? No," Matt replied, which would have been his answer even if he had actually had a hand in Clara's scheme. He _had _heard about it, and agreed that it was a good idea, and helped plan it, but John hadn't asked about that.

Okay, so _maybe _he might have had a _small _part in the plan.

* * *

**Reviews? Anyone? Anything?**

**All right, I'll ask a question. What's your favorite planet? Mine is probably Starship UK, just because the whole idea is insanely cool. Not the part about torturing a star whale. Just the "everything else" bit.**

**Next chapter: Carrots, Pocahontas, and Portholes.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	4. On Thursday, Rose Meets Carrot Boy

**Thank you to GriffinGirl8655 and jthorne . student for the support! **

* * *

The plane landed. Rose and John disembarked, the former blushing too hard to even look at the latter.

How on earth could her friends do this to her? They knew that she didn't want to rush into anything with John. Her friendship with him was so precious, _too _precious to risk losing him over a breakup. She'd only gone out with two other men in her life, Mickey (who'd broken up with her once she'd started regularly traveling with John) and Jimmy (who she didn't think about anymore. Not because she'd forgotten. Only because it hurt.), and she didn't want to become his girlfriend and then his _ex-_girlfriend. And that was if he fancied her. Never mind love.

She loved him. She did. He was vibrant and sweet and intelligent, and the money that he would inherit from the Noble estate had literally nothing to do with it. She didn't know if he loved her the way she loved him, which scared and thrilled her. Mickey had always loved her more. She rather liked being the one who loved the most, even if there was a sort of danger to it.

"How long is the cruise?" Rose asked him.

"It's a six-day cruise from Paris to Manhattan," John replied with dismay. "And we have literally no way of getting back to London once we're in Manhattan."

"Well, then," said Rose gaily, trying (and failing) to stop blushing, "allons-y, right?"

"Allons-Hey! Hey! That's my line!" John grabbed Rose's hand and jerked her toward him, pulling her into the Paris airport. She shrieked with laughter.

The couples around them stared incredulously as the pinstriped young man and the pajama-clad young woman nearly ran into a column before dashing off to the tour bus.

* * *

"Buses are bloody boring," John groused petulantly, Rose cuddled up to him as she tended to do whenever the both of them were on a long bus ride, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head snuggled comfortably with his arm as a pillow. "Honestly, if someone came up with something that could just…I dunno, materialize wherever someone wanted it to go, that would be one hell of a lot more convenient."

"You've mentioned this," an utterly content Rose replied. She loved this. The adventure, the impromptu ridiculousness that their friends had (cleverly, she grudgingly admitted) thrown them into, was her life now. "What did you say you and Matt were going to call it? A TARDIS?"

"Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Or Dimensions. Matt and I haven't worked that bit out yet. And I'm going to write a brilliant novel about it. The Doctor and his companion, Rose Tyler."

"Oh, I'm your _companion?_" said Rose indignantly, sitting up (Sort of. She was snuggled in the crook of his elbow now) and giving him a horrible attempt at a glare; she was smiling too widely for it to look realistic. "I'm the one who remembers to get us breakfast!"

John rolled his eyes and mumbled something about not needing breakfast because of his superior metabolism. Rose didn't buy it for a second, and instead busied herself with lazily dusting the pretzel crumbs off of his suit.

He smiled down at her. "My faithful companion."

"Watch it, Noble, or I'll leave you on the cruise ship and let you starve."

"Pfft. You wouldn't survive a second in the big bad world without me," John teased, taking a strand of her hair and tugging it playfully. It was strange how such an action could only be read as platonic when performed by John Noble. He was generally very affectionate, which could be rather frustrating for a girl trying to get his attentions. Something that would be romantic if, say, Matt decided to do it became a friendly action when John did it.

"You'd be surprised," Rose mumbled almost wryly, thinking of Jimmy and a council estate and beans on toast.

"What?"

"Nothing."

* * *

The cruise ship was called the _Sliver Seductress, _although by rights it should have been the_ Silver Seductress. _The I in Silver had blurred and a line had been scratched through the L-presumably some sort of rock, according to John.

"It's not because it's an old ship," he explained. "Quite new, in fact. Just that they have a lot of cruises booked and they don't have time in between to repaint the boat."

"Well," said Rose, looking amusedly up at the _Sliver Seductress. _"I rather like the name."

"Glad to hear it, miss," came the polite voice of a young man dressed in the baby blue uniform of one of the helpers. "Lot of people here say that they should have gone on a better cruise, one with a fancier boat. Grateful that not all of 'em think that."

Rose turned in surprise, gracing the man with a gorgeous tongue-touched smile. He had a surprisingly vibrant shade of orange-colored hair and enormous hazel eyes. "That's a shame. You'd think they'd have better manners than that!"

"Not all of 'em do, miss," replied the man with a rueful laugh. "The name's Oliver."

"Pleasure." Rose grinned, shifting her luggage towards John ("Oof! _Rose!_") so that she could shake the man's hand. "Nice to meet'cha. Haven't been on a couples cruise before-tell me, is this one nice?"

"Nicest one you'll find, miss," said Oliver proudly.

"Oooh, please don't call me _miss, _makes me feel all sophisticated and high-class and it's _weird,_" Rose informed Oliver with a bit of a laugh. "Call me Rose."

"_Really _nice to meet you, m-Rose." Now Oliver was blushing a bit. Rose started blushing as well, because she had just figured out that he was interested in her and he was to shy to make a move. _Why would he ever? I'm a girl on a bleedin' couples cruise accompanied by an extremely handsome bloke who she is extremely attracted to-_

"Right," said John from behind Rose, his tone suddenly clipped and cold. Rose couldn't see him, but she could tell that he was glaring at Oliver. "Shall we go, Rose? I personally can't _wait _to see our rooms."

"Rooms?" Oliver repeated, sounding honestly bewildered. "Let me see your ticket." John handed it over grudgingly, and Oliver scanned it briefly with his eyes before handing it back. "Nope. Just the one room, double bed."

Rose was suddenly finding it very hard to stop blushing, because in all of their years of traveling John had very carefully avoided sharing a bed with her. _Damn Clara and her well-planned plan! _She opened her mouth to say that she'd sleep on the couch, but then John's arm slipped around her waist (_oh!_) and he tugged her closer and kissed the top of her head.

"Sorry, Rosie," he said into her hair. "I know you wanted a bigger bed."

Oliver let out a disappointed breath.

"No!" Rose said in an extremely high voice, her pulse racing as John's right hand (which had been resting near her elbow before he'd complicated things) took hers in his and he rubbed his thumb against her palm. "N-no. It's fine. We're room eight, right?"

"Room eight," Oliver echoed miserably.

"Thanks, Oliver!" Rose gasped out as John steered her away from the sailor. As soon as they were out of the orange-haired man's sight, she jerked away (reluctantly) from his arm and demanded, "What was _that _all about?" Not because she hadn't liked it (quite the opposite, in fact) but John was never so forward and affectionate. He also kept on looking back and glowering at Oliver.

"We sh-should probably pretend we're a couple so as to avoid unwanted attention," John pointed out. "People might think that we got on the wrong plane or something, or we might get in trouble, or Carrot Boy might find out you're single-"

"Carrot Boy?" snorted Rose in amusement. "_Carrot Boy?_"

"_Yes, _Carrot Boy!" said John. "I didn't like him."

"You know what I think?" Rose teased, turning to him and lifting her chin up to look into his eyes. "I think you're experiencing ginger envy. You just wish you were as beautiful a ginger as he is, John Noble."

"You think he's beautiful?" said John indignantly. "He's-he's-CARROTS!" He then proceeded to storm away, and when his phone rang he picked it up and muttered something into it beginning with "Matt" before shouting "CARROTS!" into the phone, darting into room eight.

_Poor Matt, _Rose thought, imagining her bemused friend on the other end of the line. She vaguely wondered how his date with his one-night stand went.

Rose tugged at John's enormous suitcase, which he had left on the ground. It didn't budge. She picked up her backpack and tried to figure out how she was going to get it into the room without leaving John's suitcase outside.

John opened the door again, stormed out, grabbed the suitcase too fast, and fell over. Rose gave a startled little gasp and flew to him, bending over. "Are you all right?"

"I'm always all right," he responded. Rose smiled reluctantly and helped him up. "Look, Rose, I'm sorry."

" 'S all right," Rose replied. They carried their things in together.

Unpacking was boring. Seeing as Rose was starting to get quite tired, John had made the decision to do her unpacking for her, but it was still rather boring to watch him. (Unless he accidentally dropped something and had to bend over to get it. That was a plus.) Rose lay atop the blankets of the double bed, staring up at the ceiling. Lunch was in two hours and she was _extremely _hungry.

She was exhausted. She was also rather elated, due to the fact that John had kissed her hair. Although it was no passionate kiss on some sort of romantic beach, it was a start. Her eyes drifted shut. John, noticing this, got up and tucked her in.

Rose smiled in her doze.

* * *

"Rose?"

Rose blinked sleepily before sitting up, making sure that the covers remained around her waist. John was holding a large tray in front of her.

"I told the crew that you were hungry," he explained, "but that you were asleep. So I brought dinner up here. We don't have to go down if we don't want to. See, look at me, I remembered dinner." He sat down next to her on the bed, kicking off his shoes and putting down the tray in front of them.

"What time is it?" Rose asked with a sleepy yawn.

John checked his watch. "Seven-thirty. You slept through most of everything. Today's supposed to be for relaxing and getting settled."

"Are we on the ocean?"

"Yeah," John replied with a grin. "See? Porthole."

Rose laughed delightedly, staring over the headboard out the porthole. She could see lots of blue. It was really cool, but she'd been on a boat before. In the Bahamas, with John, their friend Martha, and a really annoying jellyfish that had stung her and sent John into a panic. It had been extremely cute and extremely painful at the same time.

"Want to watch a movie?" John asked suddenly, sliding under the covers.

They did. It was _Pocahontas. _John raptly watched it (as he did with all Disney movies) while Rose ate chips and only halfway paid attention. Somewhere along the line he got under the blankets, both of them propped up against the headboard, so it was only natural that she cuddle into his side the way that she always did on buses, and only natural that he put his arm around her and tug her closer, and purely platonic when she started to feed him chips.

Only natural.

Purely platonic.

Right?

John bit her hand by accident. Rose decided to stop feeding him chips while he was watching a movie, seeing as he had no idea where the chip ended and her hand began. She hit him lightly with a chip. He laughed and took a chip himself, popping it into his mouth and barely paying attention to Rose and her silly little lovesick grin.

Apparently _Pocahontas _was too interesting.

Rose tried not to take it too personally.

* * *

**Reviews? Reviews are really, really, really lovely.**

**Question: Favorite Doctor? Mine's the Tenth.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	5. On Saturday, Matt Catches River

**Thanks so much for the faves, follows, and reviews! (I finally get to say that yay!)**

**Okay, just as a side note, the next two chapters that are focused on Matt are both going to take place on Saturday, so that Rose's chapters can catch up to his. Hers are taking place on Friday and Saturday so that things stay sort of parallel.**

* * *

Matt was walking casually down the street on Saturday, feeling rather happy that he could take a break from job-hunting, when someone jumped off a building and fell neatly into his arms. He gasped, his knees gave out, and then he was sitting on the pavement with a shocked River Song in his lap.

"You have _got _to be kidding me," she said in utter surprise. "Matt, what the hell did you just do? Did you just _catch _me?"

"You just jumped off a building!" said Matt furiously.

"Practice," River replied. Her arms were looped around his neck. Matt was withholding hyperventilation for when he got home and could think about the wonderful smell of honey and vanilla she exuded_. _"If I'm ever in a situation like that, I need to be prepared."

"And why on earth and beyond would you be in a situation where you have to jump off a building?" Matt demanded in annoyance. "You could have been killed."

"That's the point. If I take the risk now and live, I'll have more confidence when I really need to take the risk." River was grinning now, her eyes sparkling.

"I'm not going to be there every time you decide to-to jump off a building for a laugh!" said Matt hotly.

"Sweetie," said River, "what makes you think that you need to be there? And what makes you think that you _should _be there? You've only known me for what, almost a week? And out of that week, only three days that we've actually talked to each other."

"What sort of situation are you in that you might have to jump off a building?" Matt asked incredulously.

River shrugged. "Life is unpredictable. You just never know. Are we still on for Thursday?"

"Wh-Yeah! Yeah, yeah, we're still on for Thursday," Matt replied, his cheeks suddenly starting to feel hot. She hopped up from his lap and grabbed his hands, pulling him up like she'd done on the mini-golf course. He noticed suddenly that she was in high heels and a billowing black dress. _Really, why does she have to look so good in black? It's not fair._

"Want to walk me to my Starbucks?" River asked cheerfully. "I'll let you buy me a frappucino."

"You-I-_fine,"_ groaned Matt, letting go of one of River's hands but keeping the other clutched sort of close to his chest. River not-so-gracefully yanked it away, and Matt thought he detected a faint blush lingering at her nose. "And it isn't _your _Starbucks, it's _mine._"

River rolled her eyes.

* * *

"Two Vanilla Bean frappucinos," Matt told the skinny and overly blonde girl working the counter, placing a messy wad of bills and change on the counter. "Also, do you have any jammie dodgers?" The girl giggled like Matt had just made the best joke in the universe and batted her lashes coyly. "…No? Okay, I know that was a long shot, but you can stop giving me that weird look now. Wait, are you _attracted _to me? Miss, I think that all that hair dye is affecting your brain."

River, who was next to him in line, edged in and said coolly, "Just give the girl the original order, Matt. You don't need the jammie dodgers. And don't be rude."

"But she's _attracted _to me! Do you have any idea how rare and weird that is?"

"Not in the slightest," replied River in a sultry tone, her eyes dipping down his body before going back up to his face.

_Did she just give me the once-over? _Matt blushed and turned back to the girl, who was making his frappucino. Then he scurried off to a table and let River pick up the frappucinos so that he could seriously consider the fact that River had just openly flirted with him.

_Ha ha, River! Not just a one-night stand after all!_

River walked over with the frappucinos and straws, sitting down across from him and pushing a frappucino across. "So is this going to be a regular thing? You looking out for me, trying to go to all my regular places just to see me?"

"I'm not-that is-you didn't-_since when was the roof of a building one of your regular places?_" Matt demanded, desperate to steer the subject to safer grounds. Mostly because River was actually considering him as a worthy romantic interest, actually _flirting _with him, and he'd never been with a girl who had done something like that.

"Sweetie, you're cute when you're all hot and bothered," River cooed, batting her lashes. This had an extremely different effect on Matt when compared to his reaction to the Starbucks girl (who was watching and looking rather disgruntled); he very nearly spilled his frappucino on his front.

"Don't _do _that!"

"Do what?" asked River innocently.

"Act all-all-I don't know," Matt conceded grudgingly. River smirked. "Are you jumping off of buildings into my arms on purpose?" He'd asked the question just because she'd asked something similar, but to his surprise River turned a bright red and took an enormous sip of her frappucino just to avoid saying anything. Delighted, Matt added, "Wonderful. Although you could always just text me."

"Texting," snorted River derisively. "So unreliable."

"And jumping off a building is reliable?" Matt countered smugly.

"You think you're so hot when you do that," said River stubbornly.

"Do what?"

"Act all _clever._"

"Am I?" Matt asked innocently.

"Of course you're clever," River replied evasively.

"River, is this a date?" Matt asked.

River opened her mouth, shut it again, opened her mouth a second time, and managed a weak "Yeah." Matt filed that question under Things To Make River Shut Up in his mental database.

* * *

Since it was a date, Matt figured it wouldn't hurt to walk River over to the nearby mall and window-shop. Both of them were having a lot of fun until they passed Victoria's Secret.

"Ooh, look at that one!" said River innocently, pointing to an indecently revealing nightie. Matt opened his mouth to start telling her the fifty-seven-and-a-half reasons why he could care less when his traitor of a brain decided to picture _River _in that outfit and suddenly he decided that he liked the nightie after all.

"Stupid brain!" Matt burst out.

He'd expected River to smile quizzically or give him a strange look, but instead she started laughing so hard that she had to clutch his arm to keep from falling down in her gorgeous high heels. Once her laughter had subsided enough to allow her to speak, she choked out, "You were imagining me in that nightie, weren't you, Matt?"

Matt turned a bright red (coincidentally, the exact shade of the nightie) and hastily started spouting excuses that made River laugh even harder. Not that he was _trying _to make her laugh just so she would hang onto his arm, because that would be completely ridiculous.

Okay.

_Maybe _he was trying just a little.

* * *

He drove her home.

"I'm sorry I didn't have any flowers for you," he told her. "I try to get my dates flowers every single time. Usually they just throw them away. I haven't had that much luck in the romance department, see, and-"

"_You?_" River responded with genuine surprise, her eyes widening rather dramatically. "You're all _nice! _And you actually talk to people! I bet you just have a knack for picking the wrong girls to fancy."

"That can't be right," Matt said stubbornly, making sure not to say all of what he might have if he hadn't been careful. _I fancy you, don't I?_

River snorted. "Matt Smith. Never wrong, is that it?"

"Never wrong," Matt replied proudly.

"Well, you'd best start being wrong now, because you missed the left turn to my flat about seven blocks back," River told him with a laugh in her voice. Matt groaned and attempted to maneuver back towards her flat, when in actuality he was silently thanking himself for his mistake. Because when River was superior to him she flirted, and when she flirted he went all wibbly. Good wibbly, not bad wibbly, which was nice.

* * *

By the time that they got back to River's flat, both of them were starving.

"Would you like to come in?" River offered politely. "I have some jammie dodgers in the cupboard-didn't you say that you were partial to those?"

Matt nodded, and when he went in he was surprised to see his daffodils in a vase on the floor, the dining room table occupied by lots and lots of printed paper (covered in type which was covered with notes) as well as a beat-up old laptop.

River smiled apologetically at him. "Sorry about the mess. Your flowers wouldn't be on the floor if I had room anywhere else-I'm writing a novel here."

"I didn't notice this last time I was here," blurted out Matt, and then it occurred to him that he probably would have been…otherwise occupied.

"I steered us away from the table. Last time I tried shagging someone on my table all my papers fell off and I had to sort them again," River replied unabashedly, hurrying past him to the kitchen and attempting to rummage in her cupboards, which were just a bit higher than she could reach. "Damn it. Let me go get a stool, I think I left it in the bathroom-"

Matt walked into the kitchen, gently nudged River to the side, and easily pulled out jammie dodgers before accidentally opening the package and causing a shower of jam-filled cookies to rain down on the both of them. Thankfully, between the two of them they managed to catch all but a few.

River was laughing as Matt commented happily, "I don't know about you, but I _think _we might need a plate."

* * *

River had a small secondhand television that was extremely staticky, according to her. Thankfully they were eating instead of watching telly.

"My sister's got my actual one," she explained. "Bought this one at a thrift shop. My actual telly doesn't fit in here, so I'm saving up for a bigger flat. Most of my furniture's at her house. 'Course, she's getting married soon, so she might be moving out or she might have her fiancée move in. I've got my fingers crossed that she'll move out and give me the house." She nibbled delicately at a jammie dodger. "Should I be a brilliant hostess and get you tea?"

"This is fine," Matt replied. "I like jammie dodgers."

"I can tell," said River with a mischievous grin. "You've eaten nearly all of yours. Here." She picked up a jammie dodger between forefinger and thumb. "Open your mouth." Matt obliged, not quite picking up on her intent and nearly choking on the jammie dodger. "_Oh, _Matt, for goodness sakes."

"You _startled _me!" said Matt indignantly, spraying River with bits of jammie dodger. She smirked in response.

* * *

"So what's your family like?" River asked Matt.

"I'm an Oswald, but my mum was a Smith," Matt replied. "My surname should've been Smith Oswald, but they mucked it up on the birth certificate and wrote Oswald in as my middle name. So I'm Matt Oswald Smith-Matt Smith-instead of Matt Smith Oswald. So technically I should be called Matt Oswald. Clara thinks it's hilarious."

"Clara?"

"My sister. Always brings me to parties whenever she doesn't have a boyfriend, 'cause our last names are different and she can pretend that she has a boyfriend. 'Course, I draw the line at kissing. Seeing as she's my sister-but also my girlfriend-_oh, _my life is complicated." Matt uttered a dramatic groan and leaned into River.

They were sort of cuddling on the couch. Not quite. River was a bit stiff, and her elbow was digging into his chest, but his arm was around her shoulders and her face was not at all uncomfortably close to his.

"What about you?" he asked, his voice soft and low, the sort of soft-and-low that Clara had said was always a brilliant move. But when he began to speak River closed her eyes and smiled, as if there was something wonderful about his voice, this moment, right here. Which Matt could sort of understand, but he didn't usually meet women who saw the beauty in the little things as well and _oh no he was being a romantic idiot again stoppit._

"Nothing interesting about my family," said River without looking at him. "Mum, dad, sister, sister's boyfriend-turned-fiancée. Typical family lineup." She sighed. "Tell me more about _you, _Matt, please. Is Matt short for Matthew?"

"No. _Ew, _no. _Matthew._ Don't disturb me. It's just Matt. Thank goodness."

River laughed. He felt her shake a bit against him. She had a rather explosive laugh. It was nice.

* * *

**Question: Under different circumstances, might Ten/Donna have worked? I think _maaybe, _although it's a bit of a long shot.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	6. On Friday, Rose Is John's 'Girlfriend'

**Thanks for all the faves follows &amp; reviews!**

* * *

Rose must have fallen asleep in the middle of _Pocahontas, _because first she was watching Pocahontas and John Smith running the hidden pine trails of the forest and then she was lying in the darkness of the bedroom, the comforting and barely-detectable rocking of the ship lulling her.

It was most likely the middle of the night, seeing as the porthole behind her showed a starry sky and a dark blue ocean. Of course, she was hazarding a guess as to what the porthole showed, because at the moment her cheek was resting on John's chest. They'd fallen asleep in their clothes, and somehow they'd gone from casual cuddling to full-on embracing.

John sighed into her hair and mumbled something unintelligible. Rose closed her eyes again.

* * *

She woke up in the morning with John still cuddled close to her and _ohno. _

Her legs had looped around his waist. She wasn't quite sure _when_ they had decided to do that sort of thing, or why, but they had looped around his waist and she was rather annoyed at them for being so traitorously blatant.

She tried to pull away. Her legs sort of snagged on the sheets. She swore softly, because it was highly unlikely that she could maneuver away without waking up John. Then she rested her chin on his shoulder and closed her eyes, because if she couldn't fix the utterly un-platonic nature of this situation she might as well make it worse.

Then she realized that she should probably get up and get ready for breakfast, and in her effort to try and get up without waking up John she somehow managed to hit him in the face.

Also, he was sort of lying on top of her right leg.

"Ow," said Rose and John at the same time, him lurching up so that they were nose to nose and she was sitting in his lap.

"Sorry!" gasped Rose, jumping up and nearly tripping over her own feet once she was standing unsteadily on the carpeted floor. "Sorry-here-I'm gonna change in the bathroom. Let me just go get some new clothes."

John scratched his cheek and blinked sleepily at her before falling back onto the pillows with a loud _whumpf. _Rose had to giggle softly.

* * *

She chose short denim shorts, a pink t-shirt, and leggings, mostly because she didn't really want to do much of anything. The whole point of a couples' cruise was relaxation, and the freedom to do what they liked. And _her _plan was to stay in the nice cabin bedroom and do absolutely nothing romantic at all.

But she put on mascara and lipstick, just in case, and tied her hair back into a ponytail, and wore the horrible (and brand new) teal Converses that John had bought her as a present. ("So we can match," he'd told her excitedly. "Us being traveling buddies, we need to be able to find each other in a crowd." It was almost cute how flawed that sort of logic was.)

John was tying his shoes when she came out of the bathroom. He was now dressed in a freshly dry-cleaned blue suit. Personally, Rose preferred the brown one, but he'd slept in that one so he'd probably do better to wear the blue one. He looked up and grinned at her as the bathroom door closed behind her. "Ready to go?"

"Go where?" Rose replied curiously. "Aren't we just going to stay in here or something?"

"Oh, come off it, Rose, are you _really _going to miss out on a luxury cruise experience just because it's obviously a ploy to get us together?" asked John cheerfully. "There's a soft serve machine in the dining hall. And you can have a banana split for _breakfast. Breakfast! _You are _not _staying in here."

"Why can't I?" Rose asked indignantly.

"Because," John replied, "I am _not _leaving you here in the bedroom alone. You'd get bored, and you'd wander off, and then I'd get worried and think you'd fallen off the ship or something and dive into the water to save you and-"

"You're just scared that I'd run into Oliver again," Rose teased.

"What? _No!_ Why-what-why would you think that?" demanded John indignantly. "Why on _earth _would you think that? It's _painfully _obvious that Carrot Boy isn't your type."

"Oh?" said Rose. "So-since you seem to be an _expert _on this sort of thing-what exactly _is _my type?"

"I dunno," John mumbled reluctantly. "Still, I like spending time with you."

Rose groaned. "Don't. Really, don't. I can't say no when you get all sincere and sad and pouty."

"Ooh! That's good! Are you coming, then?" asked John eagerly. "I'd really like you to come."

"Fiiine," Rose muttered grudgingly.

John punched the air, grabbed her hand, shouted "Allons-y!" and took off so fast that they nearly ran into a door frame. Of course this didn't hinder John, who just ran faster as if to outrun the possibility of running into a door.

* * *

True to John's word, there _was _a soft serve machine in the dining hall.

"See?" he asked Rose proudly. "See? And bananas. And I bet that there are cherries somewhere! I could make all the banana splits I-"

"John," said Rose patiently, "I am _not _letting you eat nothing but banana splits for six days."

"You aren't the boss of me!" said John petulantly, crossing his arms and mock-glaring at her.

"Maybe so, but I _am _your 'girlfriend'."

As she'd expected, this effectively shocked John into silence, aside from a little gasp of "Wh-what?"

"For six days?" Rose said with a little giggle. "Because Clara, Donna, Amy, and possibly Matt roped us into the cruise?"

"Oh. Right. Yes. I knew you meant that. I was absolutely not thinking that you meant anything else." John turned to face Rose and his elbow hit the soft serve machine, causing vanilla ice cream to pile up on the carpet. "And just because you're my 'girlfriend', with quotation marks, because you are definitely not my real girlfriend-not because you wouldn't make a good girlfriend, just because-um-I don't think that this is really the ideal time to have this conversation-ooh, _waffles!_ I'm going to go get some waffles. Waffles are lovely." He all but dashed away, leaving Rose standing shell-shocked by the soft serve machine with a pile of ice cream by her foot.

"Mixed signals, anyone?" she muttered to no one in particular before following John to go get some waffles for herself.

They ate waffles together at one of the tables, Rose with a side bowl of fruit salad, John with a side bowl of slowly-melting soft serve vanilla ice cream.

"So," said John conversationally.

"So," Rose echoed.

"So." John took a heaping spoonful of ice cream, ate it, and yelled "BRAIN FREEZE!" so loudly that Rose shrieked. "Heh. False alarm. Can we talk about something now?"

"Right," said Rose, now slightly annoyed. "What d'you plan on us doing today?"

"Ummm. Hmmm. See, most of the stuff that we can do here is rather geared towards romantic-y couple-y activities, and so I figure that our safest bet is to go to the nice platonic swimming pool. What do you say?"

"Is it really that awful, the idea of me being your girlfriend?" Rose mumbled almost inaudibly.

John heard her. "I had a girlfriend once," he said coolly. "Reinette Poisson."

_Reinette Poisson. _The name rang a bell. Rose had heard Matt make a reference to her with a bit of a scowl, and once when she'd been out with the girls Donna had commented on a lovely young girl who had given them directions as "no Reinette Poisson, that's for sure."

Rose decided that this was a conversation for another time and took a large spoonful of her fruit salad so as to avoid speaking. John, seeing that he'd sort of upset her, gracefully distracted her by taking a spoonful of her fruit salad with his ice-creamy spoon.

"Oi!" she said indignantly through her mouthful of cantaloupe and grapes, smiling reluctantly and swatting his hand away. "Get your ice cream off of my fruit salad, John Noble, or I am _not _going to go and be platonic in the pool with you!"

"But _Rooose,_" whined John with the diplomatic reasoning skills of a three-year-old, "I don't want to go down to the pool by _myself!_"

"Get me more fruit salad," said Rose in mock irritation. John complied sulkily, making sure to walk extra slowly.

Her mobile rang. She picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Rose," said Melody in her trademark serious way. "I'm calling on Amy's behalf."

"Melody!" said Rose excitedly. "Brilliant! How's being a hermit going?"

"Hermits don't get WiFi," Melody replied. "I gave up last week. I'm going back to my studies this Monday."

Melody Pond was Amy's rather antisocial sister (with the reputation of the "smart Pond") and one of Rose's closest friends. She didn't usually meet up with Rose, Clara, Amy, and Donna, but for some reason she was fine with meeting with just Rose and Amy. Something about 'old friends sticking together' or possibly 'I really don't want to meet anyone new that I haven't met before.'

Rose, however, was a special case, because when they'd met she'd been a bit of a mess.

* * *

_Rose Tyler was eating chips and crying on a park bench, her mascara running. After she'd broken it off with Jimmy she'd found out that he'd been borrowing money from her bank account with no intent of paying it back. She was horribly in debt._

_The chips weren't even hers. She'd found them on the park bench when she'd slumped down to have a good cry and decided to eat them, just because she was too upset to care about where the chips might have been. Chips had always been her favorite comfort food._

_"__Oi!" A redheaded woman (who plainly hadn't noticed that Rose was sobbing hysterically) hurried up to her, dragging along a nineteen-year-old girl with blonde hair in a loose bun. "That-those-those are Melody's chips!"_

_Rose looked up at the pair and started crying even harder._

_The woman's indignant expression dissolved to one of worry, and she sat down next to Rose and gave her a one-armed hug. "Hey, hey, it's okay. What's wrong, sweetheart, hmm?"_

_"__I-I'm a bit of a mess," Rose mumbled through her tears. "Sorry."_

_"__No, no, it's okay!" said the woman, who on closer inspection was revealed to be Rose's age. "I'm sorry I yelled. Mels and I, we left her chips here, and she needs her chips to study. We're both a bit hungry."_

_Rose sniffled. "So my name's Rose. What's yours?"_

_"__I'm Amelia, but I go by Amy. This here's Melody, but if you call her Mels she'll murder you."_

_Melody sat down on Rose's other side. "Sorry Amy attacked you. She's been having a rough day."_

_"__Same," Rose laughed ruefully, wiping her face with her sleeve and looking up at the pair with puffy red eyes. "My boyfriend cheated on me and didn't even bother denying it."_

_"__Oh," said Melody ever so softly, taking Rose's hand in hers and giving her a sad little smile. "Oh. Amy's problem isn't nearly as awful."_

_Amy sighed. "My boyfriend proposed to me and I think I'm in love with my best friend."_

_"__Except she isn't in love with her best friend," Melody whispered conspiratorially into Rose's ear, a loose blonde curl brushing Rose's cheek. "And it's more than likely that she'll figure it out when her boyfriend comes tomorrow with flowers."_

_Rose laughed; a real laugh this time._

* * *

"Anyway," Melody continued, "Amy wants to know _exactly _what's going on with John, but can't, because she has to ask around about bridesmaids for her wedding. Also I think I was supposed to ask you if you can be a bridesmaid."

Rose smiled a little bit. "'Course I'll be a bridesmaid. Are you gonna be there for the wedding?"

"I don't do weddings," Melody replied flatly. "So is there any trivial bit of information that'll appease Amy so that I'll never have to do something like this again?"

"Umm. John got brain freeze?"

"Wonderful," said Melody cheerfully. "Got to get back to…to my studies. See you in a bit."

"See you in a bit," Rose echoed, giving Melody a warm smile even though she knew her friend couldn't see it.

"Rooose?" came John's hesitant voice. "I think I turned on the soft serve machine and now it's jammed-can you get my screwdriver from my jacket pocket? I bet I can fix it."

"Gotta go," Rose muttered into the phone. "John being…you know, John."

"I know-" began Melody with a laugh in her voice, and then said with a strange stiffness, "Seeing as I've never met him, I _wouldn't_ know. Sorry. Bye."

"Bye," Rose echoed, and switched off her mobile before leaning across the table to where John's jacket was hanging off his chair.

They went to the nice platonic swimming pool and it was nice and platonic. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rose was seriously beginning to wonder if Clara had thought her plan through.

* * *

**Next chapter: Melody Pond is further introduced-sorta.**

**Question: If you could meet Martha Jones or Mickey Smith, which one would you want to meet? I really can't answer this one.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	7. On Saturday, Matt Joins The Modern World

**I'm so sorry for the slow update! I hope that this chapter makes up for my horrible slowness, and I should have another one up soon.**

* * *

"So-um-would you like me to go?" Matt asked. " 'Cause if you would, I will, and if you don't want me to, I'll stay, I just don't want to overstay my welcome or-"

"You can go now, if you like," River replied. "This-this was nice. I'm looking forward to Thursday."

"Are you _quite sure _that you don't want to jump off a building again?" Matt asked with a grin. "I don't mind catching you."

River laughed softly, and opened the door for him, but just before she closed it she said ever so softly, "This may seem a bit silly, Matt, but I had a strange feeling that you were going to be there to catch me."

Matt stood in the hallway for about five minutes until he remembered that he should probably get back to his house.

* * *

"You've got this silly little grin on your face," Clara commented, looking up from where she was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "Anything interesting happen?"

"The thing with the buildings and the frappucinos and Jammie Dodgers and _Yowzah _she looks good in black," Matt mumbled indistinctly. "Also she said that she trusted me. Not directly, but still. She trusted me."

Clara giggled. "Sorry, what?"

Matt blinked. "Nothing. Never mind."

Clara smirked a bit. "It's some girl you met, isn't it?" she asked in her All-Knowing-Voice that irritated the hell out of Matt. She'd invented it when he was eight and she was four and she had decided that the sky was blue because it had been painted that way. Nothing that Matt could say (including citing sources from numerous science textbooks) could convince her otherwise. And then, as if to rub salt into the wound, little Rose had informed her that the sky was blue because it just _was, _and Clara had decided that that was the reason. Matt had sulked.

"Not quite," Matt replied dreamily. "Clara, can you distract me? I need to do something productive, and if I'm in a haze-"

"Ooh!" Clara clapped her hands together. "Check your email!"

"…email?"

"_Yes _email, the one I set up for you last month! Amy even got her sister to send you a 'Hey, welcome to the modern world' email, and I got all our friends to write you a little something too. You don't even have a Facebook, Matt, so go and check your email. That should keep you occupied."

"Right. Email. Cool! Thanks." Matt gave his sister a slightly less spacey smile and hurried over to his laptop, which was lying on the coffee table. He knelt down awkwardly next to it, opened it up, went to his email-

"Claraaa?"

"Yeah?" Clara called from the kitchen.

"What's the username?" Matt shouted reluctantly.

"_BowtiedGiraffe_."

"Wha-_Hey!_"

"Oh, don't be like that, you can change it if you want!" Clara laughed.

Matt typed in BowtiedGiraffe and glared at the screen-

"Claraaa?"

"Yeah?" Now she sounded a trifle annoyed.

"…what's the password?"

"_Bowtiesarentcool_, no capitals, no apostrophe, no spaces."

"_Yes they are! _You're just doing this to annoy me."

"No, I'm doing this so that you'll stop telling me about technology that _should _exist and start using the technology that we normal humans have."

"Fine," Matt grumbled, typing in his password.

He ignored the new emails, instead changing his username to _bowtiesarecool_ and his password to _YestheyareClarashutup_ before deciding that that was too long and changing it to _River._ Not because she was really special, just because he figured that it would be a hard password to guess.

And also because when he typed her name and saw it there it made him think of her.

_(Oh dear I have it bad.)_

He clicked on the month-old emails one by one. There was a silly little note from rosieposie first, and attached pictures of her and John in Venezuela. John was wearing an enormous floppy hat with a pink ribbon and looking extremely disgruntled.

Then there was one from itotallyinventedthebananadaiquiri (Matt made a mental note to ask John about his username) telling him not to look at any of Rose's attached pictures and explaining that he'd lost a bet. Matt had to laugh softly at this.

A short "hi" from toosexyformyshirt (here Matt had to roll his eyes), who had never really liked email, mostly because according to him "it made seduction one hell of a lot harder."

A long story from supertemp about how she was writing this right after yoga class and she'd nearly spilled her mango smoothie on a really pretty paisley dress that she'd been wearing and she was going on another date with Shaun tonight-maybe he might finally pop the question? This made Matt smile broadly, because about a month ago Shaun _had _popped the question to Donna.

A note from rorywilliams saying that he thought Matt might like to see some of the pictures from one of their trips. They'd all gone to Hollywood, Rory and Amy and Clara and him, and a lot of the pictures consisted of him wearing flashy sunglasses, Amy wearing those short skirts that Rory got distracted by, and Clara looking rather amused at all of them. There was one Amy had snapped of him walking into a pole. Matt decided to stop looking after that.

A bit of a rant from ameliapond about how he really should have gotten email earlier because she had lots of links to send him. Then one from her with lots of links. What a surprise.

A bored "hello" from oswin. (Oswald for the Win; something that Clara had come up with when she was twelve.) Matt wasn't quite surprised; Clara _did _see him every day. What could she really say in an email?

The last email made Matt pause, because he didn't recognize the username. "pondm"?

He clicked it hesitantly.

* * *

_Hello._

_I'm not one to write emails to people I don't know, but apparently you've recently joined the modern world. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not you do read this, because I have no intention of meeting you. Amy's been pushing me to meet you for ages. If I met you and liked you and fell in love with you (as she is so adamant about making happen) then she would be right, which I'm reluctant of allowing._

_Seeing as we've never met, I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Melody Pond, and I'm Amy's little sister. As I mentioned, Amy's been trying to get me to agree to meet you, but I never have, mostly because-well, if you want the real reason, you're going to be sadly disappointed, because the only person who knows that reason is Amy-suffice it to say that I'm a bit antisocial and leave it at that._

_Anyway…welcome to the modern world! Yay! God, I hate the word "yay", it makes one sound like a fifteen-year-old girl with a gift card to some designer store, but Amy wanted me to put something of the sort into the email. It was that or "woohoo!" so you take your pick._

_What else can I put in here, seeing as you probably want an interesting email? Oh yes. I'm the "clever Pond" if you haven't heard of me, the one with the reputation of being a good little genius, and it's really very boring, because as Amy's the flirty party girl I should by rights be the one who's not. It's what my family expects of me. Not my parents, but my extended family… I really shouldn't be writing any of this, much less sending it to you, but seeing as all I know of you is your username (BowtiedGiraffe? I can tell that you didn't set it up yourself. At least I hope you didn't.), you seem less like a real person and more like a cyberghost of the internet._

_Drop me a note if you get this and you aren't a cyberghost. Or don't. I don't mind either way._

_Sincerely,_

_Melody Pond_

_(Interested in archaeology. Amy mentioned that you don't much like archaeologists, so I'll put that in and see if that hinders your response time.)_

* * *

Matt was intrigued. Melody Pond? Amy had mentioned her in passing a few times, but he'd never actually met her. Now he thought he saw why. And from what he read in her email, he liked her.

He typed up a response.

* * *

_Hello._

_Sorry that it took me so long to write you back, I only just got onto email. I'm a month late, I know, but stuff happened that I don't care to share with a practically-a-stranger. You seem nice, though._

_My name's Matt Smith, actually, not just BowtiedGiraffe. I blame my sister Clara for that awful username. I'm BowtiesAreCool now, because they _are, _and suspenders too. Don't you dare tell me otherwise. I wear them every day. Clara says I look like a uni professor, but Clara doesn't know anything at all. Sisters…_

_I'm horrifyingly romantic (taking my one-night stand out on multiple dates, everyone says that I'm ridiculous but she's really quite amazing) and I hope that doesn't bother you. I swear I won't make any moves on you if I meet you, though, mostly because I fancy said one-night stand who is hopefully going to become more._

_Also, I don't like the word "yay" either. Could that be considered as something we have in common? _

_I hope you'll write back._

_Sincerely,_

_Doctor Matt Smith_

_(Of everything but archaeology. Amy's right. I'm sorry, but I much prefer time travel over archaeology. And don't tell me that it doesn't exist because IT WILL.)_

* * *

Matt hit Send and surfed the internet for a few hours, bookmarking some available jobs (including a job at a university) before clicking back to his email and seeing if Melody had sent anything. By this time Clara had left for a date with some new teacher she'd met at her workplace, and he was alone in the flat. It was boring.

Melody had responded two minutes ago.

* * *

_Hello._

_I'd nearly forgotten about writing to you. To be honest, I'd thought that you didn't exist. _

_You fancy your one-night stand? What's she like?_

_Melody_

* * *

The strangely concise email didn't quite fit with the other one. Matt checked both of them, then responded with a bit of bewilderment. Why would Melody care about River?

* * *

_Hello again._

_Her name's River Song and she's utterly wonderful-not just because she's beautiful, but because she's an excellent conversationalist, a good listener, and extremely fun to be around. Also she's a bit mad, which I like. Love a bad girl, me, but don't tell her that if you run into her._

_Why the sudden interest in her?_

_Matt (are we dispensing with formalities?)_

* * *

She wrote back with another quick email in five minutes.

* * *

_Hello._

_I just found it curious that you would go out with your one-night stand. Isn't the point of a one-night stand that it's _one night_? _(Matt let out an indignant huff at this. Honestly, did everyone have to tell him that? He knew about stuff like that; he wasn't five! …Okay, so he did have a Christmas list and an interest in toys and at times a short attention span, but still.) _Still, it's endearing and intriguing, so I'll continue writing to you._

_I know I'm rather standoffish, but the truth of the matter is that the people in this world are generally all the same. It's rather a rarity to find someone interesting and sweet and kind who's willing to put up with all sorts of nonsense-and I'm a bit of a nonsensical person at times._

_Melody_

* * *

Matt rolled his eyes and instant messaged her instead.

_That's not true. Most people are different from each other. The people who are all the same are the ones who think that people are all the same._

Her response was surprisingly prompt. He wondered if she'd been waiting for him to write back.

**_All right, I'll concede ungracefully to that one. _**

_So what are _you _like, Melody Pond?_ Matt typed. _All I've got to go on is that you're into archaeology and that you're a clever goody-two-shoes. According to you, anyway._

**_I resent the goody-two-shoes bit. I'm not exactly a goody-two-shoes all the time._**

_I don't know anyone who's a goody-two-shoes all the time._

**_Yes, but with me it's a bit more complex._**

_Oh, so everything is more complex with you than it is with the rest of the world? You seem to be putting yourself a bit higher than most of us._

**_I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you._**

Matt felt a little bit guilty at that. _It's fine. I think that emails and instant messages and texts should have a little note saying what tone of voice they were sent in._

**_Ha! Exactly. That would save me about two hours of agonizing over what the other person thinks of me…So you were joking when you typed that?_**

_I could have put a smiley face in, but they're sort of overused nowadays._

**_You sound like my granddad. "In my day, we didn't have these newfangled electric toilets!" Or something like that._**

_Are there actually electric toilets?_

**_Not the point._**

_No, no, really! Are there actually electric toilets? That would be so cool._

"Matt?"

Matt jumped. Clara was staring at his screen and looking half-puzzled and half-amused.

**_Yes, there are. Some electric toilets, I think in Japan. I really love Google._**

"Can this wait?" Matt asked. Clara nodded amusedly, retreating back into her bedroom (had she left the kitchen? He hadn't noticed.)

_I know! I remember being a kid and my mum telling me "You'd better go research it Matt" and I always did, and it was always fun._

**_Researching and fun in the same sentence? Now I'm certain I like you._**

_Anyway, it's so much easier with Google, even if I like books better._

**_Books are lovely. I could spend the rest of my life in a library. Have you ever smelled that book smell? It's lovely._**

_I know what you mean._

**_Oh! Sorry, sweetie, I have to get off the computer-Amy wants to see if she can find an available church to get married in._**

_Maybe we can chat again sometime?_

**_I hope so._**

* * *

Something nagged at the back of Matt's mind, something that bothered him all through his dinner, something more than failed job-hunting (which one didn't normally do during the summer, but seeing as during the school year it might be a bit more difficult and Matt _really _wanted to be a teacher), something puzzling.

It only occurred to him when he was falling asleep exactly what that something was.

_Sweetie?_

* * *

**Next chapter: Rose and John run into some unexpected shipmates.**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	8. On Saturday, Rose Could Dance All Night

**Lookit me being all efficient! I love three-day weekends. Updating's probably going to be a bit slow after this, unfortunately.**

* * *

The next day, Rose slept in. She and John had done a lot of swimming in the pool, and quite frankly she was exhausted from it. She was woken at about ten in the morning by a loud metallic clank, so loud that it made her jerk up out of bed.

"Sorry Rose!" gasped John from the floor, where he was doing something that she couldn't quite see. Rose leaned forward, and it was revealed that he'd taken apart the television. "Just adding some minor upgrades, it's going to be amazing, can you pass me that little copper wire over there?"

Rose smiled, now lying on her stomach and observing him fiddle with a small circuit board. "You do realize that you might damage the television, right?"

"Yeah, well, I don't have much else to do," John retorted with a little grin. "Are we going to go swimming again?"

"Ugh, _no, _I'm knackered," Rose groaned. "Maybe we can just stay in today?"

John's face fell, but he gracefully hid his disappointment by saying, "Sure! We can have a nice relaxing day today, how's that sound? But I should probably go and get some breakfast. You might want to get dressed in the bathroom like yesterday."

Rose sighed sleepily and reluctantly got out of bed, dragging her feet a bit as she stumbled blearily to the bathroom.

* * *

She took a long shower. By the time she was dry and dressed, John was already back in the room, eating a banana and watching the newly-improved television.

"Got breakfast," he said, gesturing to his left (where a nicely stocked tray was precariously perched on an end table) without taking his eyes off the screen, and patting the spot next to him with his free hand. "Here. Sit and watch. They've got a movie on."

"Is it The Lion King?" Rose asked amusedly.

"Maybe-Shhh! Simba's about to go into the elephant graveyard. DON'T GO, SIMBA!" John shouted at the screen through a mouthful of banana. Rose laughed, crossed the room, picked up the tray, and sat down next to John, where they watched movies for quite a while.

They spent the entire day in the bedroom, watching chick flicks, action movies, soap operas, and basically trying out every single channel. For lunch they ordered chips from room service. Rose complained about the quality of the chips. John shushed her and watched _Sleeping Beauty _with rapt attention.

"She looks like you," he commented without looking at Rose.

"Wh-of course she doesn't, don't be silly."

"No, she's an alternate you. Loves pink, blonde hair, pretty smile-"

"You think my smile is pretty?" asked Rose breathlessly, her cheeks reddening a little, scooting closer to John. He promptly took an enormous handful of chips, shoved them all in his mouth, and said something indistinct through the food. Rose correctly interpreted this as a weak attempt to avoid the question and decided not to fish for compliments, instead asking, "D'you want to head down to the dining hall when it's time for dinner? We could get all dressed up; I brought a really pretty dress for that lecture we were going to go to in Brazil."

"That sounds lovely," John replied vaguely.

* * *

She had bought the dress with Amy and Melody at a nice little thrift shop-no way could she afford designer. It was a magenta one, and it flared out at her knees and swished when she moved. It had a pair of matching heels that would put her nearly at eye level with John, and she carefully did her hair into a bun and applied makeup to match.

She looked nice.

She liked looking nice.

She wondered if John was going to notice.

* * *

John was adjusting his bowtie when she came out. He was wearing a tuxedo, and Rose had to smile a bit at that, because he looked really sweet in a tuxedo.

"Right!" he said cheerfully without turning around from the mirror near the door. "Ready to go?" Then he turned around, and his smile faded slightly to be replaced with a sort of stunned-puppy look.

"Everything all right?" Rose asked, feeling a little silly. Had she overdressed?

"Pears," said John softly. "I mean, um, bananas. No, not bananas, _molto bene. _Yes. That. That thing. You look…you look."

"Okay," said Rose with a little amused smile. "Glad to see you…like it? Or should I change?"

"No!" said John hastily and emphatically. "No! I love it! You look beautiful! I-"He gave her a sad little smile and swallowed. "Shall we go, then?"

Rose grinned and took his arm. "Dinner and dancing, right? You _do _know how to woo a girl."

"This is _not wooing-_dancing?" John was suddenly interested, as Rose had expected. He _loved _to dance. "Allons-y, Rose Tyler!"

* * *

When they entered the dining hall, they very quickly saw that they had been correct to dress formally. This dining hall had a dance floor, and it was refined, couples dancing slowly and peacefully in each other's arms.

"Oh," said John. "This sort of dancing."

"Is that bad?" Rose asked him.

"No! No-just-"

"Doctor?" called a voice, and Rose and John both turned. "Oh my god!" And to Rose's great shock, none other than _Martha Jones_ hurried over, her high heels giving her hips a little sway that Rose envied slightly. She was wearing a little black dress that most definitely was _not _from a thrift shop.

"Martha!" said John in happy surprise, scooping the young woman up in a hug and very nearly lifting her off the ground. "It's-this is-what are you doing here?"

"Yeah, Martha, what's going on?" said Rose loudly, and thankfully Martha had the tact to step away and turn to her. "It's lovely to see you here."

"Rose-_oh,"_ said Martha, happy recognition in her gorgeous chocolate eyes. "John mentioned you recently, something about regular traveling? I work with him at Royal Hope Hospital."

"Oh, yeah!" Rose laughed a little. "That's during the year, right? John and I travel together in the summer, like now, so I don't know that much about his life during the year."

"What _are _you doing here, Martha Jones?" John asked curiously, smiling warmly at Martha. "Wasn't expecting to see you on a couples cruise."

"My boyfriend and I are getting really serious," Martha replied happily. "He proposed last week-this is just a little romantic getaway before we start planning the wedding."

"Congratulations!" said Rose excitedly, a small part of her relieved that she wouldn't have anyone competing with her for John's affections.

"Who's the lucky man?" John added.

"Hang on, he's coming over right now," Martha answered, spinning to greet a man who was staring incredulously at Rose. "Mickey!"

"Rose?" said Mickey.

"Mickey?" squeaked Rose, color flooding her cheeks.

"John," said John loudly, "if we're playing the name game."

"Oh, right," said Martha, her cheery air sort of deflating. "You mentioned Rose, Mickey, didn't you?"

"Yeah," said Mickey. "Yeah, I mentioned Rose."

"And you two are getting married-congratulations!" said Rose with cheer that was more than a little bit forced. "I'm so glad for you."

"You two are together, then?" said Mickey, an _I-told-you-so _expression on his face, and Rose opened her mouth to say _no, _or _not exactly, _or _this whole damn awkward situation is entirely my friends' fault and I'm going to kill them when I get back, _but John was quick to reply "Yeah, me and Rose are together now" and take her hand.

Rose blushed.

"That's really sweet," said Martha awkwardly. "Really-Mickey and I, our dinner's probably getting cold, but see you around, okay?"

"Yeah, see you around," Rose muttered in response, and as soon as they were a safe distance away she turned on John. "How the hell did _Martha _end up with _Mickey?"_

"Martha fancied me," John replied. "Mickey fancied you. For some reason they both gave up at the same time. It was bound to happen."

"Oh," said Rose. She then sat down at an empty table, crossing her legs daintily at the ankle and making her dress swish. "Are we going to order?"

"Rose?"

"Yes?"

"This seems an awful lot like a date to me," John muttered.

Rose felt her heart do a little stuttery leap, and she decided that maybe Clara's meddling had done _some_ good. "John, we're on a _couples cruise. _It's going to be extremely awkward if we don't acknowledge that some of these things we're doing together _are _dates."

"Okay." John sat down across from her and picked up the menu. "I'm going to have a banana split, banana cream pie, banana bread, and-"

"John," said Rose, trying to look stern and aware that it was failing miserably, "you need to actually eat something _healthy._"

"I said banana bread! Didn't I say banana bread? Banana bread is healthy. Bananas are healthy."

"Banana bread is _breakfast._"

"Fine, Mum," John groaned dramatically. "Take away my only joy-oh, no, wait, I have other things I love in this world."

"Like what?" asked Rose innocently.

"Like-like traveling. I love traveling. And my family, and-um-"He looked up at her with soft eyes, his mouth opened-

"Welcome to the Silver Seductress' special dining hall," said a brunette waitress. "May I take your order?"

Rose didn't trust herself to speak. Instead, she let John stammer out a "No, no, we still, we, um, we need some, some more time, yeah, thanks, bye" before opening her menu.

* * *

Dinner was a quiet affair. They ate, and made small talk, but Rose kept on thinking about what he might have been about to say.

_Don't be ridiculous, Rose. If he really did love you, he'd have told you by now. There is absolutely no way that he has that much self-control, and why wouldn't he have admitted to it?_

"So," said John through a mouthful of salad, "how's work?"

"Well, seeing as we spend the summer traveling, it's not really going anywhere right now," Rose replied. "But it's nice, I mean, it's a bit boring being a shop girl but it pays the bills."

"Work is a conspiracy made to bore innocent humans," John teased. "I mean, it's not like people _need _the help of kind, lovely shop girls such as yourself to find out exactly where the clearly marked aisle of jeans is located."

Rose laughed loudly. "You're so _mean!_ Haven't you ever gone shopping?"

"Donna does my shopping," John replied. "Then she yells at me about being too lazy to do my own shopping. Then she says that I need to grow up, but shops are big and scary. I got lost in one when I was eight."

"Poor baby," Rose said with a half-sympathetic and half-mocking little smile, reaching across the table and taking his hand. He gave a small start as she drew a soft circle on his palm with the tip of her thumb, but then his hand closed around hers and she couldn't resist smiling a little bit. "Ready to order dessert?"

"You know, we can just order dessert in our room," said John. "I want to _dance."_

"Oh, really? With me? Now, that's not that platonic, John."

"_Well,_" said John, "I feel obliged to bend the rules, as you happen to look utterly gorgeous tonight." He then made a little sputtering sound, as if he couldn't quite believe his own admission, but quickly covered it by standing up, her hand still enclosed in his.

Rose blushed visibly. "D'you mean it?"

"Of course I mean it, Rose," John replied with a grin. "Now come on and dance with me." He stepped around the side of the table and pulled Rose up from her chair.

"I've still got some salad to finish!" protested Rose weakly.

"Forget the salad," John whispered, and then he started walking to the dance floor. "Do you know how to waltz?"

Rose shook her head.

"I do, I think," said John. "My mum's bloody ridiculous, made me take loads of dance classes when I was seven. I can teach you, though, if you want."

"I'd love that," Rose replied breathlessly.

"Okay," said John with a wobbly grin. "Okay. So I take your right hand-here-and then you put your hand on my shoulder." Rose obliged, placing her hand lightly on the soft fabric of his tuxedo jacket. "Then I put my hand on your waist," he added, and he did, resting his palm at the curve right above her hips before hastily muttering "Sorry!" and moving a little higher.

Rose moved closer, just a little bit.

"Box step!" said John softly, glancing over at the musicians to make sure that his voice wasn't drowning out the soft violins. "One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three-"

She mimicked his movements, carefully, cautiously. She'd always been a bit of a rubbish dancer. Then his hand left her waist and he _twirled_ her, before dipping her gracefully so that her head was inches from the floor and her mouth was inches from his.

"You're _brilliant _at this!" she said, not bothering to mask her astonishment. "I wouldn't have pegged you to be a dancer."

"Ah, Rose, there's a lot of things you don't know about me," John replied lightly, pulling her back up and going back to their simple waltz.

"Like what? Like that Reinette you mentioned yesterday? 'Cause I'd like to know about her," said Rose. "I'd like to know all about you, seeing as you're my best mate."

"I'm your best mate?" John echoed.

"Well, you know, aside from Amy and Melody and Donna and Clara and Matt and Jack," said Rose cheerfully. "Oh! And Rory!"

"Now I feel really special," John muttered. Then, "Melody?"

"Amy's sister, remember?" said Rose. "Oh, right, you probably haven't met her…she keeps to herself."

"Okay," John replied reluctantly. "But I'm your _special _best mate, right?"

"Fishing for compliments much?" Rose teased, her tongue poking out of her mouth as she smiled at John. "Fine, yeah, you're special." She stood on tiptoe-which was a bit precarious in high heels-and kissed him on the cheek, pulling her hand away from his so that she could grip his shoulders to keep herself balanced.

To her shock, she felt John's arms snake around her waist, and when she pulled away to look at him he lifted her neatly into the air and spun gracefully on the floor, her dress swishing and flaring out. He put her down, not letting go of her, and smiled broadly. "How's that for special?" he teased.

"Special enough," Rose replied bashfully, and _gosh _did she want to stay in his arms forever.

* * *

**Next chapter: More of Melody, and Matt nearly burns the house down.**

**Reviews?**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	9. On Sunday, Matt Is All Limbs And Chin

**So I made a little technical error with the chapter titles; last chapter took place on _Saturday _not Sunday. Okay. Just saying. **

* * *

Matt woke up at 5:03 in the morning because the neighbor's extremely annoying dog was barking. Of course Clara slept through it (his window was _right _next to the doghouse next door) so he didn't have anyone to talk to.

He went over to his computer. To his great surprise, he'd gotten an instant message from Melody just about five minutes.

**_Are you awake? Amy says she left her favorite scarf over at your place, and I was wondering if you were awake so she could swing by and pick it up later._**

Matt found it a bit odd that she didn't want to come over herself, but thankfully he had enough tact not to question it and instead write _Yeah, I'm up._

**_Oh, that's brilliant. I would drive over myself, but the car keys are in Amy's room and she's still sleeping._**

This didn't add up. _Then how would you know that she left her favorite scarf at my house? _Matt typed with a small frown, and it took about a minute for Melody to write back.

**_She mentioned something about it yesterday. How's your day going?_**

_Seeing as it's barely five in the morning, I'd say it's a bit too early to tell. Still have to go out and apply for some more positions at universities, pick up some groceries for Clara, and possibly run into River at some point._

**_Run into River?_**

_I think she's following me._

**_Right. I bet you're following her._**

Matt was about to write an angry retort when he realized that Melody sort of had a point. Sort of. Kind of.

_I'm not following her._

**_Really?_**

_Intentionally._

**_I bet she's not following you intentionally either._**

Matt had to smile a bit at this. _That's easy to say if you don't know River._

**_Well, I don't know River._**

_She's very…collected. She wouldn't waste her time following me around._

**_Collected? _**

_As in "so pretty it's almost terrifying" combined with an attitude._

**_Basically the dream girl of millions of men._**

_Was that sarcastic? I can't tell when I'm instant messaging if that sort of thing is sarcastic._

**_I'm not sure, honestly. Amy's like that, though, and she's had _****loads ****_of boyfriends._**

_Yeah, well, compared to River, Amy's a docile young thing._

**_You just made me snort tea all over my laptop. I'm going to go get a paper towel._**

Matt waited. It took about five minutes for Melody to write back.

**_Okay. Back. Computer's a bit less tea-sodden. Amy-a docile young thing? I find that hard to believe._**

_I meant in comparison to River, Melody, not just in general._

**_Ah. That's just a bit scarier._**

_What?_

**_Someone more flirty and pretty than Amy._**

_She probably isn't flirtier or prettier at all._

**_Oh._**

_No, I mean, I fancy her, and when I do that I sort of put her on a pedestal and_

**_Worship her?_**

_No. Just-she's really amazing and funny and smart and clever and_

**_I get the idea, Romeo._**

_I'm no Romeo._

**_From what Amy tells me, you serenade every single girl you go out with._**

_Not true! I only serenade the ones I fall in love with._

**_You would have done so much better in the sixteenth century. _**

_I wouldn't have survived without my laptop._

**_Same here. Everyone's all "Oh, sixteenth century! Fashion! Dancing! Fun! Gorgeous rich men!" but I really just like writing on my laptop._**

_Writing on your laptop?_

**_Yeah. I'm practicing._**

_Practicing what?_

**_Hang on, earlier-did you say that you're looking for a position teaching?_**

_Yeah, why?_

**_There's a position open at Luna University. It's across campus from me, so I could avoid actually meeting you and proving Amy right, but I bet I could pull a few strings for you. Term starts this August._**

_Are you serious?_

**_Completely, Romeo._**

_Don't call me Romeo when you're being serious._

**_I'll just call you Romeo all the time. It suits you._**

_You haven't even seen me in person. How can you accurately judge the sort of name that suits me?_

**_Lucky guess. Do you have brown hair?_**

_Why?_

**_Romeo should have brown hair._**

_That's not true. He could have been blonde._

**_Juliet's the blonde one. All willowy and blonde and fair._**

_I bet Juliet had space hair, _Matt wrote, unable to stop himself from thinking of River. (Stupid brain.)

**_…_****_Space hair?_**

_Yeah! Curly. Browny-yellow. Bouncy. Kind you want to tug on to see if it springs back._

**_Oh my god._**

_What? _

**_Nothing._**

_What?_

**_Can you email me your job application form so that I can send it in for you? I'll send you the interview date tomorrow._**

_You're using diversionary tactics again, Juliet._

**_How am I Juliet?_**

_Because it's an annoying name and if you call me Romeo I'm calling you Juliet._

**_You do that and we're meant to be._**

_What?_

**_Romeo and Juliet, idiot! Is that your normal pickup line?_**

_Oh. Oops. That wasn't what I meant._

**_Course not._**

_Listen, I think my sister's waking up-I'm going to email you the form and then I need to get off the laptop and make her breakfast._

**_Maybe we could chat later, though?_**

Matt smiled, a silly little smile a lot like the one when he got through talking with River. Melody possessed the wonderful ability of making a chat about nothing seem like a chat about everything.

_Yeah. Definitely._

He emailed her his resume and got off the computer, hurrying to go make Clara some pancakes.

* * *

"Morning!" said Matt cheerfully as Clara stumbled blearily into the dining room. "Making pancakes! Got a job offer-this pancake looks sort of evil, I have dibs on it-d'you know where the soy sauce is at?"

Clara shook her head sleepily and slumped into a chair.

"Well, you're chatty," said Matt, reaching up into a cupboard and pulling out the soy sauce. "I'm trying pancakes and soy sauce, you want some?"

"Ew, _Matt, _no," Clara groaned. "Just eat them with syrup."

The doorbell rang.

"I'm getting it," said Clara, getting out of the chair and stumbling out of the dining room sleepily. Matt turned back to the stove-

"Ohnoohnoohno!" he shouted desperately, waving at the copious amounts of smoke and the steadily increasing flames. "Pancakes getting all explody-wody-_Clara I set the pancakes on fire help meee!_" He grabbed a cup, filled it with water, and poured the cup on the frying pan. There was a loud sizzling and a lot of popping before the flames went out, and he heard a soft gasp from the doorway. "Clara?" called Matt, turning, and to his horror he saw River in the doorway with a terrified look on her face. "Oh," he said. "Hi."

"You-you-for _god's _sake, Matt, you almost set the curtains on fire!" gasped River. "You could have burned the house down!"

"What are you doing here?" Matt asked, utterly flabbergasted. "Our date's on Thursday, remember?"

River sighed, then replied, "I left my purse in your car. I couldn't call ahead because my phone's in your purse, and I only remembered this morning."

"Oh," said Matt, and then, "Can I-can I just finish the pancakes?"

"Matt," called Clara, from where she was presumably shutting the front door, "what was all that shouting about?"

Matt looked down at the charred, soggy mess of pancakes before shouting, "I think I'm going to be a bit late with breakfast, Clara, I'd recommend getting dressed so that you have something to do while you wait."

"All right," Clara called back. "River, make sure he doesn't burn the house down, okay?"

"I'll do my best," River muttered, "but I think it's a bit of a lost cause."

"Oi!" said Matt. "You have _no idea _how hard it is to make breakfast!"

"Watch me make breakfast and show you how easy it is," said River with a grin, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on a chair. She was wearing a loose blue blouse today, along with a pair of jeans and the same ratty Converses. Matt was starting to get the distinct impression that there were two sides of River; the made-up femme fatale and the normal young woman. He wasn't quite sure which one he liked more. She strolled over to the counter and hip-checked him. "Budge up, sweetie, I don't want you burning the house down. Clara said you aren't supposed to."

"Clara's my little sister," said Matt huffily. "I am not obligated to listen to little sisters."

River rolled her eyes. "_I'm_ a little sister."

"Not _my _little sister-god that would be weird," said Matt. "I'm sure you're a lovely little sister-no, no, can I take that back? Not because you're not lovely, you _are, _just that-"

River took his hand, spun him away from the counter so that she was facing him, and placed a finger over his lips, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "I'd recommend quitting while you're ahead, honey."

"Right, yes, good idea," Matt mumbled, distracted by her soft space hair and her wide beautiful eyes and her lovely mouth and-

"Are we going to make breakfast or not?" River said impatiently, moving her finger away from his lips and turning back to the counter. Matt didn't let go of her hand. "Stop it. I can't cook if we're holding hands."

"Nope."

_"__Matt."_

"Never letting you go, Doctor Song."

River blushed. Really blushed. And Matt realized that he had once again managed to throw her off of her game. She turned bright red and _yanked _her hand away, staggering a few steps back. "Sorry," she said breathlessly. "Just-sorry. I-breakfast?"

"Breakfast," Matt echoed a tad disappointedly, turning his attention back to the counter. "Pancake mix-can you get that? It's in the cupboard-"

"Yeah. Sure. Mix. Cupboard." River walked toward him and stopped suddenly. "You've-you've got a lot of cupboards."

"Yeah, I have."

"A lot of cupboards," River mumbled again, her eyes fixed on his.

"Yeah, a lot."

"Which one is the pancake mix in?" said River softly.

"Oh! Mix! Right! Sorry!" Matt stumbled backward and very nearly scalded his hand on the frying pan holding the still-smoking pancakes. River uttered a yelp and grabbed his hand, yanking him uncomfortably close to him.

"Sorry," she said, her eyes wide. "Just-you could have burned yourself."

"I can't take this anymore!" Clara exploded from the doorway. "Will you two either shut up and snog or stop the shy-flirting and _get me my bloody breakfast!_"

Matt and River looked at Clara, then at each other, and then both of them burst out laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. Somehow River ended up hugging him and laughing hysterically into his shoulder, and then he was leaning precariously against the counter and his foot slipped. He fell against the counter, both of them still laughing, and distantly Matt heard Clara mutter something about how she was going to go get something at Starbucks and leave the room.

When they finally stopped laughing, River looked up at him and said softly, "I really like you, Matt."

"I really like you too, River," said Matt with an easy grin. "So can we stop with the awkwardness? We know we like each other-we don't have to act like it's a big thing."

River smiled broadly. "I'm sorry I was silly about things. Just-I was talking to a friend earlier, and something surprising came up. That's all."

"Sure, fine, yeah, whatever works for you," Matt blurted. "I'm actually getting really hungry, though, so d'you mind helping me make some actually edible pancakes? Clara's going to kill me when she gets back."

River pulled him away from the counter. "Let's do this. I'm absolutely _spectacular _at cooking."

* * *

She wasn't.

Actually, she was worse than him, which was saying a lot.

"Matt," called River from her station at the frying pan, "it said oil, right? Does olive oil work?"

"What? I-no! You're supposed to _grease _the pan-did you put olive oil in the pancake mix?" Matt responded in horror. "I'm starving, _please _tell me you didn't put olive oil in the-"

"Of course I didn't!" River replied indignantly. "I'm not an idiot, Matt, I put it on the _pan."_

Matt smirked. "You're _awful _at this, ha ha."

"Am not," said River stubbornly, turning away from the pan and crossing her arms at him. He could see the smile in her eyes, though, so it sort of rendered the entire thing useless.

"Are too." He flicked a bit of flour at her. She shrieked and flicked olive oil at him.

"Take that back, Matt Smith!" she shouted.

"Not a chance," he replied smugly, taking a bigger handful of flour and throwing it at her. She sputtered and laughed and poured some olive oil into her hands, flinging it at him and spattering his nightshirt. "Oi!"

"Take. It. Back! I am _so _wonderful at cooking."

"Are not."

River huffed, smiled a bit, and flicked a bit more olive oil at him. "What d'you say to cereal, sweetie?"

"I say that it's the best idea you've had yet," Matt replied, "and that's saying something, because you're _brilliant._"

She laughed.

* * *

She said that she had to leave after breakfast, so cereal was actually a good idea. He found that it was nice eating cereal with her and squabbling over the comics section. Eventually they had to scoot their chairs together.

In a daring moment, he put his arm around her and tugged her into his side. She didn't object.

* * *

"This is Clara's car," said Matt as he dug in the front seat before handing River her purse. "I've been using it to drive you places. It's a very nice car. I swear I didn't intend to take your purse with me, or anything like that, it just-"

"Sweetie, I've already taken full responsibility for it," River replied with a breezy laugh. "Our date's on Thursday, right?"

"Can I keep your purse so you have an excuse to come visit me on Monday?" Matt asked playfully, taking River's hands in his and smiling at her happily, because he really did like her.

"How about I just come over for lunch today instead?" River asked in response, and then "Oh look, it's noon, and I appear to have gotten a text from my sister saying that she doesn't need me at home after all. Isn't that lovely? I suppose I'll have to stay with you."

"Thank goodness," Matt replied breathlessly.

River smiled shyly, an expression that seemed unnatural when compared to her usually confident façade. But then he'd only known her for a few days, so he couldn't really tell what she was like. He squeezed her hands, trying to communicate that he _wanted _to know her, and the shyness in her smile seemed to fade.

* * *

Lunch was grilled cheese, made by Clara of course. Clara and River had apparently met earlier at a teahouse, where River had proceeded to pour herself a bottle of champagne that she'd gotten from the back. Clara had been so impressed with River's "borrowing skills", as River called them, that they had become friends. Not close ones, though. Matt had a feeling that River didn't have many close friends.

"This is the random lady you shagged?" said Clara in amusement. "I hadn't expected it to be River!"

"Clara shut up shut up shut up," Matt muttered.

"I mean, River's all _curves _and _hair-_"

"Thank you, Clara!" said River with delighted gratification.

"-and you're all _limbs _and _chin_!" Clara concluded with a laugh.

"_Clara really shut up really shut up really shut up,_" Matt muttered with a bit more intensity.

"Oh, I like limbs and chin," River replied airily. "Bowties, too."

Matt grinned broadly, like someone had handed him the moon, because he was fairly certain that he was starting to have a crush on this woman.

_(okay that's a lie Matt you totally fancy her but you just aren't ready to admit it yet)_

* * *

**Reviews? **

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	10. On Sunday, Rose Is All John's

**Yay I've updated! If you want to know why it took me so long, go check out the new Eleven/River oneshot I wrote. The second one, not the first one. I'm feeling very Eleven/River-y, so you should expect another oneshot from me rather soon.**

* * *

Rose was starting to really like waking up in John's arms. It was warm and cuddly, and his breath tickled her hair, and-

"John?" she said ever so softly. He didn't stir. She had just realized that she was still wearing her dress, which was really rather unfortunate. She could tell it was going to be wrinkled and she was going to have to wash it when she got home-no, wait, did the cruise ships have laundry? She tried to shift away. He pulled her tighter into his arms.

"Rose," he mumbled sleepily into her hair.

"Yeah, that's my name, now can you let me go for a sec? I'm still in my dress."

"Not bloody likely," John said, sounding absolutely positively _not _awake at all. "All mine."

"Sorry?" said Rose, fighting a hysterical giggle and failing, so that the word came out as a bit of a laugh.

"What?" said John, jerking up and accidentally pulling Rose with him. Then, "Oh," and then, "Damn it, Rose, I'm sorry. I wasn't that awake, I-"

Rose giggled again. "It's fine!"

"Good."

"Right."

"Right." John fell back down onto the bed. Rose fell on top of him, due to the fact that his arms were still around her waist. Her eyelashes brushed his cheek.

"Sorry!" said Rose breathlessly, thinking that if she leaned up just a little bit more she'd be able to kiss him thoroughly. And she _really _needed to tell him how she felt, because otherwise she was going to end up a pathetic sobbing mess with her girls at the end of this cruise.

"You're still in your dress," yawned John, letting his arms drop so that Rose could roll off of him. "What d'you want to do today?"

"Dunno," said Rose. "The dancing was nice-d'you want to do that again?"

"Don't want to run into Martha again," stated John. "She's nice, but I think she still fancies me a bit."

"You're a hard person to stop fancying, John," Rose replied softly. _Believe me, I've tried. _"What if we order breakfast up here and then go and explore the ship? We've not done much exploring, and it's already Monday. The ship's in Manhattan on Wednesday."

As she'd expected, at the mention of exploring John was suddenly much more alert. "Come on, Rose!" he said cheerfully, springing up from the bed and hastily undoing his bow tie before accidentally throwing it out of the open porthole. "Oops. Matt lent me that one."

Rose snorted. "I really can't wait to see you tell him."

"He said it was one of the ones a girl gave him, so it doesn't really-"

"Was it Idris? I know he fell in love with Idris."

"Rose, he's _Matt, _he's a romantic idiot and he falls in love with everyone."

"I wouldn't say _everyone, _that's more Jack's territory. Did you know he flirted with Amy's coworker, Sarah Jane? And she's like in her _sixties._"

"I think Donna still has a sweet spot for Jack. Don't tell her that he flirted with Sarah Jane."

They chatted playfully as John took off his suit jacket and Rose undid and combed her hair. To Rose's surprise, she was able to gracefully excuse herself from the conversation to go and get dressed in the bathroom-in all the time she'd spent being attracted to John, she'd never realized how much she liked talking to him.

* * *

Breakfast was a quick affair, and soon they were racing each other down the deck of the ship.

"Ha!" crowed John, grabbing onto the pole that they'd decreed the finish line. "I beat you!"

"I _let _you," replied Rose with the dignified air of a small child.

"Did not."

"Did so."

"I was on my school's cross-country team."

"They let everyone on cross-country."

"You're just jealous because you were never on cross-country!"

"I was going to try out when I was seventeen," Rose replied, crossing her arms and wrinkling her nose. "And I would've made it, too-I was on gymnastics."

"So why didn't you?"

Rose swallowed very hard, and then she answered, "Jimmy Stone."

"Who?" said John with a slight frown.

"Does it matter?"

"Was he your boyfriend?"

"Does it matter?"

"Course it matters, Rose, I'd actually rather like to know about this mysterious Jimmy Stone."

"Well, _I'd _like to know about this mysterious Reinette Poisson that you mentioned a few days ago, so why don't you tell me a bit about her, and then I'll tell you about Jimmy?" Rose was fairly certain she'd won now. John hadn't wanted to talk about Reinette, she'd seen it, and-

"She was French."

"That is seriously _the _most evasive answer ever, John."

"All right, fine, she was intelligent and kind and sweet and pretty."

Rose swallowed and looked down, trying to pretend that his words didn't feel like small blows to her stomach. "Um-Jimmy was ginger."

"What?" said John indignantly. "That's-that's not-"

Rose smirked. "I'm _kidding. _He was blonde. People used to think he was my older brother 'till we started snogging. Why, you got something against gingers?"

"D'you have a _thing _for gingers?" said John, twisting a strand of his hair a little bit jealously.

* * *

The ship proved to be rather uninteresting. They'd already been to the pool, and all there seemed to be was an abundance of bars and dining halls.

"Isn't there a _library _or something anywhere?" John complained when he'd stuck his head into yet another dimly-lit dining hall. "This is getting boring fast. What, people just want to eat, get massages, and walk along the observation deck?"

"Under the extremely romantic starry night," Rose commented.

"Yes, that, but the thing is, isn't it more romantic to just _be _with the person?"

"I dunno," said Rose with a shrug. "I think it's nice when you can tell that the person you fancy is actually trying to get your attention with a romantic setting."

"Rubbish," said John. "What's _really _nice is when you're just with the person, and maybe they know about the way you feel and maybe they don't, but that's not the point, because it's so nice just to be with them. Just to be around them. And sometimes you can't really overstep your boundaries, because you want to be careful and you don't want to muck something up, and _oh _I am being _blatantly _obvious aren't I?" he added with a groan.

"Pretty much, yeah," said Rose breathlessly, "but I'll pretend I didn't hear you-I-" She blushed. "You're a bit hard to read when it comes to romance."

John opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and then he said, "I'll tell you about Reinette-_all _about Reinette-when we get to Manhattan. And I don't intend to tell you anything before then, Rose, because my explanation about Reinette might help explain why I'm so hard to read."

"Okay," said Rose.

And suddenly she couldn't _wait _to get to Manhattan.

* * *

They spent lunch on the observation deck, John with an enormous pair of sunglasses that Rose still hadn't been able to convince him to toss.

"I can't," he told her patiently, sitting down on one of the benches. "Amy'll notice. They were a gift, you know."

"For _Donna!_" Rose groaned, sitting down next to John, taking off her hoodie, and placing it next to her. It was wonderfully hot.

"And Donna never uses them, so-"

"Because she thinks that they look stupid!" Rose protested vehemently, the effect spoiled miserably by the happy sparkle in her eyes.

"Donna thinks your gorgeous teal dress looks stupid," said John as if he'd just come up with the supreme counterargument.

"Oh god, you're the only bloke I've met who actually used 'teal' in a sentence," Rose giggled, leaning against John on the bench.

"Is that a bad thing?" John asked, and she couldn't really tell whether he was serious. Damn giant sunglasses.

"Hell no! It's adorable! Always use the word 'teal', John, it's a good word."

"So you think it's adorable when I say 'teal'?"

"Course."

"Teal. Teal teal teal teal teal teal."

Rose started giggling, because the self-satisfied expression on John's face was really _the_ most adorable thing. "Oh my god, stop it!"

"Teal-teal-teal-teal-teal, teal-teal!" sang John triumphantly, then "Let me keep the sunglasses."

"No."

"Wear the sunglasses."

"No."

"Teal-teal-t-"

"_Fine, _you win, I'll let you keep the sunglasses."

"Changed my mind."

"What?"

"I want you to _wear _the sunglasses now."

Rose groaned. "Can't I do something else?"

"Nope," John replied cheerfully, popping the P. Rose rolled her eyes, leaned forward to snatch the sunglasses (and possibly throw them off the observation deck), and fell straight into John's lap.

He uttered a startled gasp, and suddenly Rose gave up on being scared. Instead, she sat up with her legs pointing to John's right, shifted a bit so that her chin nuzzled into his shoulder, twisted to wrap her arms around his waist, and calmly stated "Ready to give up the sunglasses yet?" as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

"Sunglasses?" John repeated.

"The sunglasses, yeah," said Rose with an amused smile. "You know, the ones that you're wearing right now?"

"What? Yeah! Sunglasses, yeah! Course, sunglasses, sunglasses are bloody stupid, don't know why I needed them, sunglasses, sunglasses, yeah, yeah, I'm really looking like an idiot right now aren't I?"

"Completely," said Rose with a broad grin, plucking the sunglasses off of John's nose and tossing them over her shoulder.

"Oi! Those were my sunglasses!"

"Thought you said you didn't need 'em?" asked Rose innocently.

"Ugh, _fine, _you win," said John reluctantly, and his hands moved to her waist and tugged her closer. Her stomach did something that Matt would probably have classified as a "bumpy-wumpy happy-wappy jump". She gagged internally at the thought of using one of Matt's expressions.

"This is nice," said Rose bashfully, cuddling into John and closing her eyes. "All sunny and warm."

John sighed softly, wrapped _his_ arms around _her_ waist, and pulled her so close that she rested her cheek and a bit of her neck on his shoulder instead. "You win, Rose," he mumbled.

_Yeah, John, I really think I do._

* * *

Donna called at about three, when Rose had dozed off in the hot sun. The buzzing of her phone in her discarded gray hoodie (also the loud beeping that Rose had chosen for Donna's ringtone-loud, brash, and actually really nice once you got used to it) startled her awake, and she lifted her head blearily.

" 'S all right," John told her gently. "You go ahead and sleep. I'll get it."

Suddenly Rose was _very _awake. "John, _no, _Donna's going to think-"

"Hello?" said John, removing one of his arms from Rose's waist to answer the phone, and even Rose could hear the resulting shriek that came from the small speaker. "_Ow, _Donna, bloody _hell _you can scream. No, I haven't-_what?_" He turned bright red. "I haven't _shagged-_why would you-I'm answering her phone because she was napping! It wasn't in her back pocket, get your mind out of the gutter! If it _were, _I would have let her answer it-_that _is beside the point."

"Can I have my phone?" said Rose with a sleepy yawn.

"Go back to sleep," said John. "Busy getting annoyed at my irritating older sister. _Yeah, _that's _you, _don't sound so shocked-what? No, I haven't!"

"Haven't what?" asked Rose, shifting to look at John.

"Nothing," John replied, and then Rose caught Donna shrieking "KISSED her, Spaceboy, have you KISSED her? Don't lie, you know you want to-"

"_Donna!_" gasped Rose, mortified, and she snatched the phone from John, twisted away, and hissed into the speaker, "I'm gonna bloody _kill _you!"

"Just moving things along," Donna said innocently. "You do realize that both of you are complete idiots, right?"

"There's _no _way that I'm gonna get that lucky, Donna!" Rose shouted into the phone, losing her temper. "John's…fantastic!"

"And you're also sitting in his lap, so I'd hazard a guess that he's heard you say that," Donna stated cheerfully. "This worked out _way _better than I'd planned. Bye! Love you! Have fun snogging John!"

"You-"Rose began, but Donna had already hung up, and so instead she had to pocket her phone and turn around to face a shell-shocked John. "Hi," she said sheepishly.

"Did you-did this-"John stammered, and then he seemed to collect himself. "Okay. Manhattan. We're going to talk about this when we get to Manhattan."

"Why do we have to wait?" inquired Rose.

"Because I'm rubbish at spontaneity, and I need some time to think about how the hell I'm going to explain to you that I-"John swallowed. "I just-"He groaned and buried his face in her hair.

"You all right?" Rose asked him gently.

John pulled his head up to look at her. "When do we get to Manhattan?"

"Thursday," Rose replied. "Thursday. We get to Manhattan on Thursday."

"Okay," said John. "Okay. Thursday's what, three days away?"

"Four," Rose told him.

"Lovely."

* * *

That night, when they fell asleep, she moved forward and cuddled into his arms.

He didn't object.

In fact, five minutes after she'd pretended to fall asleep, she thought that she might just have felt the light brush of his lips against her forehead.

* * *

**The next two chapters are both going to take place on Thursday, and they are both going to have some very important developments-can't tell too much...spoilers!**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	11. On Thursday, Matt Very Much Likes Cliche

**Nothing to write here, actually, sorry...just putting something here because I feel like it would look empty otherwise.**

* * *

It was Thursday.

"River's coming in precisely fifty-seven minutes so we have to make the house look really really nice!" Matt yelled, dashing around his bemused sister (who had been cuddled on the couch with her not-quite-a-boyfriend-but-a-bit-more-than-a-casual-first-date Danny Pink) and randomly throwing couch cushions about before tripping over the end of the rug and falling smack on his face. "HELP ME CLARA!" he shouted into the rug.

"In case you haven't noticed," Clara replied with irritation plain in her voice, "I'm _busy._"

"Yeah, and if I weren't here you'd be snogging him we _know _I don't _care _help me!" Matt cried in one breath (a feat which he might have found impressive if not for the fact that he was worried out of his mind about River). Danny was staring at him slightly incredulously.

"Oh, go jump out the window," Clara muttered. "Once you and River start going out I am _so _going to get you for this." Matt turned a violent hue of crimson and mumbled something vague about how it was extremely unlikely that he and River were going to enter into a fully formed relationship, which caused Clara to snort and reply, "Right. And you two totally weren't shy-flirting when she was over on Sunday. Like a couple of bloody teenagers."

Danny was looking rather bemused.

"I'm going to go get ready," Matt mumbled, stumbling away to comb his hair for the fiftieth time and instead finding himself sitting down at his laptop to write an IM to Melody.

True to her word, Melody _had _gotten him a job interview, and he'd be heading over next Tuesday to make a (hopefully) reasonably good impression on some of the Luna University staff. He'd also been spending long hours every day IMing her, and she IMed back surprisingly promptly. Almost like she was waiting around for him to write to him, but he was trying not to fancy a girl that he'd never met and especially not when he was so diligently fancying River.

Except Melody was somehow more _real _than River, even if Matt had never seen her face. River could talk to him, River could giggle with him, but he knew next to nothing about her family and her life. She seemed sort of plastic, sort of fake, and then at the same time there was something hidden about her.

But Melody…She'd write these passionate rants that she'd have to email him about things like how disgusting cafeteria food was when she was in primary school and how she went to a primary school two months ago and the food was amazing. Ridiculous things that somehow told him just a little bit more about the sort of person she was. He imagined vibrant ginger hair like Amy's, maybe a bit curlier, and sparkly brown eyes. She might be a little gangly, not quite the standard of beauty that Amy was, or maybe he'd just read too many romance novels. _Good _ones. He was a sucker for a good romance, although he'd never admit it.

_What's up, Juliet? _Matt typed.

**_I'm walking somewhere._**

_Where?_

**_Somewhere. Does it matter? _**

_Not particularly. Asking questions is my thing when I'm happy, and it's a lovely sunny day._

**_Oh, are you one of those sunny-day people?_**

_I don't much like the cold is all. Too…cold. I have zero cold tolerance._

**_Okay then. Matt, Amy says you wear vests._**

_Only when I'm pretending to be Clara's boyfriend. Why, are vests a deal-breaker?_

**_Possibly. Depends on the vest. I do love a good vest._**

_I've been looking for you all my life-tell me, what do you think of fezzes?_

**_FEZZES? Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. You just sent me into shock. Oh my god, we can never meet, and if you wear a fez I swear I'll shoot it off your head._**

_You own a gun?_

**_If you wear a fez I'm going to find a gun and kill it._**

Matt laughed. _That's one of the best reactions to a fez that I've gotten yet._

**_You're welcome, sweetie._**

There it was again, and it was very odd. No one had ever called him "sweetie". Ever. And now both River and Melody were

Oh.

_Oh._

_Sweetie. _

When you're one person masquerading as two (for an unknown reason) you're bound to slip up once in a while.

Oh. Oh damn it. Oh Rassilon. Why the hell did he have to be so _smart? _No normal bloke would have picked up on something like this, but he wasn't exactly a normal bloke. And what if he was wrong? If he was wrong, if this was one of his crazy theories (Clara said he came up with a lot of those, and he agreed with her to a certain extent), that would just make things even worse, because now he was going to have to do some investigating.

He needed his Sherlock Holmes hat. Or maybe just a hat, in general, to help him calm down.

And then Matt knew what he needed to wear on their date.

* * *

"Oh my god," said River when Matt answered the door. She was carrying a large satchel that might or might not have a laptop in it (which made it even more likely that she might have been writing him as Melody while she was walking), as well as wearing a denim jacket, jeans, and a white blouse. _Why did she have to wear so much form-fitting stuff? _"Matt, what in the name of sanity have you got on your head?"

"It's a fez," said Matt in as dignified a voice as he could muster. "I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."

River eyed him critically, then she said, "Right. And I bet you're one of those blokes who wears Stetsons too, right?"

"Umm…maybe?"

She groaned. "Lovely. So where are we going?"

"River Song, we're going ice skating in the summer," said Matt cheerfully.

River stared at him, and then she said, "You're kidding, right?"

"No," said Matt in his most authoritative voice, which was usually only reserved for when he was telling Amy and Rory to stop kissing and when he was telling Clara to stop touching his knickknacks and collectibles. To his astonishment, River started to giggle. He was delighted at the sound, seeing as he had a feeling that it was something that she didn't do often. "What?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "Come off it, Matt. You _can't _pull off the tough voice. You sound like you're trying to discipline kittens."

"I would be _so good _at disciplining kittens!" said Matt indignantly.

"No, sweetie, that's not what I mean, I mean that you sound like you want to sound tough but you're trying to be nice at the same time."

"Wouldn't want to scare people off with my amazing tough voice," said Matt stubbornly. "Because my tough voice is. Amazing, that is."

"To the ice rink, then?" said River in amusement.

"Geronimo," said Matt, taking her arm.

"River, he's completely _mad _for you!" Clara called from the living room, the smugness of revenge in her tone. "He was rushing about like a _madman_ trying to figure out how to impress you tonight!"

"Oh god _shut up Clara,_" Matt muttered to his feet. River laughed happily. "You ready, River?"

River rolled her eyes. "Nope, not ready, I'm actually planning to spend the entire day here in the doorway."

"Really?"

"No. Come _on._" River gave him a tug that jerked both of them out onto Matt's front steps.

* * *

"I love ice skating!" Matt enthused once they'd reached the rink, wrapping a warm multi-colored scarf around his neck with mittened hands. "See, look, I have my mittens, and my scarf, and my fez, and my skates, and-"

"You can ice skate?" said River bemusedly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Matt asked indignantly, crossing his arms petulantly, catching the end of the scarf, and very nearly strangling himself. Thankfully River intervened.

"That," she said. "You nearly kill yourself with your own scarf, Matt. You expect me to believe that you can ice skate?"

"I," said Matt, "am brilliant at ice skating. You are going to be extremely impressed by my absolutely amazing ice skating skills."

River rolled her eyes. "Watch. You're going to be absolutely horrific, and I'm going to laugh."

"No, _you're _going to be absolutely horrific, and _I'm _going to laugh," Matt replied smugly. "I've ice skated many times before."

"Have you really?" said River in mock surprise. "I would have thought that your amazing ice skating skills-"

"_Absolutely _amazing, River-"

"-would have carried over into real life and made you a bit less clumsy."

"Oi! I'm not-"

"It's endearing," said River cheerfully. "I'll be a moment, I need to rent some skates."

"I'll go with you! I'm your date, remember?" Matt grabbed her hand in his mittened one and gasped softly. "You're freezing! I can feel it through the mittens."

"I'm fine," said River airily, but Matt could see her shivering slightly.

"No," he said stubbornly. "No, no, no, no, and no." He took one of his mittens, put it on her hand, and shrugged off his tweed jacket, draping it over her shoulders. "Better?"

"Now you're going to be cold," said River softly.

"I'm fine!" Matt lied easily, because now River looked a bit warmer and there was a happy shyness in her eyes. "I have loads of cold tolerance!"

"Oh, you _so _don't."

"I _so _do, and how would you know?"

"You mentioned it to me, didn't you?" River replied airily. "Zero cold tolerance." Matt was suddenly reminded of the remark he'd IMed Melody, and at his shocked expression, River fidgeted nervously and said brightly, "You need something too, Matt," before handing him back his jacket.

"I'll manage," he replied halfheartedly, still puzzling over River and the likelihood of her being Melody Pond-_Oh bollocks, if she_ _**is** Melody_,_ I had a one-night stand with **Amy's little sister****-**__Amy's going to kill me!_ Matt choked on air. River sighed softly and took the jacket back.

* * *

Matt slipped on the ice the moment after his skates touched the rink, and River had to grab him by his suspenders and pull him toward her. Of course, because he seemed to be having extremely bad luck, this ended up with him sort of pinning her against the wall.

"Sorry," he mumbled, trying (and failing) to ignore that for a hard-to-get femme fatale, she sure was soft. His hands moved to where hers were clutching his suspenders and lightly removed them, keeping her hands tucked in his. He pulled them away from the wall and fell backwards onto the ice.

River shrieked. "Oh god, Matt! Matt, sweetie, are you all right?"

She was straddling him now.

This appeared to be the day for suggestive situations.

"Have you ever had one of those days where things are so cliché that you really just want things to not be cliché?" Matt asked, staring up at River.

"Actually," River responded seriously, "I haven't, because this isn't exactly a cliché conversation to have when I'm sitting on top of you."

"Well, cliché is a relative term," Matt replied. "Some things can be so un-cliché that they _are _cliché, if you know what I mean."

"No clue," River said bemusedly. "But really, Matt, nothing about this is normal."

"Our first date was mini-golf and pizza, and you wore a black dress and some sort of corset thingamabobber," Matt said. "I've learned that our dates tend to absolutely shatter normality."

"Thingamabobber?"

"It's a word now."

"Thingamabobber?"

"Yes. Word. It's a word. You've got a problem with my word?"

"I'm extremely worried that I'm going to fall in love with you, that's all," River confessed breathlessly, "because I find shattering normality quite attractive."

"There. See? That was so cliché. Only people in horribly written romance novels talk like that."

"I talk like this all the time."

"Lucky for you I happen to like romances."

"The ones with the happy endings or the ones with the sad endings?"

"The ones where you _know _the way it's going to end," said Matt, "but you don't know how they're going to get there."

River stared at him, and then she said, "If it weren't extremely cliché, I might kiss you right now."

"I'm good with cliché," said Matt, "but if we're being logical, you're straddling me in the middle of an ice rink, and I'm fairly certain that even more people will start to stare if you kiss me."

"Ah. Well, then, logically, we'll have to get off of the ice."

"Logically, yes, because I'm afraid that we're going to get kicked off the ice if we stay like this much longer. That or get run over by someone's ice skates."

"I almost got my finger hacked off by an ice skate blade once when I was seven," said River with a sentimental laugh, pulling Matt up so that he was sitting with her in his lap. "Scared me half to death. Amy yelled at the ice skater for thirty minutes-she was nine, I think."

"Amy?"

"My sister," said River, her eyes suddenly uncertain. "Don't lots of people have sisters named Amy?"

"I know a girl with a sister named Amy," said Matt, his heart thudding so fast in his chest that he thought maybe he might have two. "Wonderful girl. Melody Pond."

"Lovely name," said River, "but I think this is a discussion for another time."

"Tell me, please, because I really do have to know," said Matt. "Are you-" But he found he couldn't say it, because he didn't want one of his crazy theories to lose him another obviously very normal girl.

He wasn't normal. He'd known that for a long time. It was a good sort of not-normal, but it was rather hard for one to find another not-normal person that one wanted to spend the rest of one's life with.

And he had the worst feeling that River _was _normal, but he was fairly certain that she was going to mean a lot to him. He just had to make it work. Pull himself together. And yet, and yet, there was something distinctly not normal about her.

Normal but not normal.

"Never mind," said Matt softly.

"I'll tell you about it at some point," River replied.

"What?" said Matt, his eyes jerking up from the ends of his scarf to meet hers. "Are you saying you're-"

"Yes."

_Ohhh. Stupid me. _"Hello," said Matt breathlessly.

"Hello," River replied, smiling at him.

"But-but that means-"

"I'm afraid it does," said River with a soft laugh.

"But you and I, we, we-" He made a few kissing noises to get his point across; he didn't want to get into a discussion about how he couldn't just use the word 'shagged' right now.

"Yes," River whispered.

"And you didn't tell me-why?"

River's silly little smile vanished and she said softly, "I sort of-it's just-I can't."

"You can't," Matt repeated. "Why?"

"I just-spoilers."

"What?" said Matt, completely thrown.

"Spoilers." Now River was starting to look a little less upset. "You know how in a movie, you never want to know the end because it'll spoil the emotional impact of the journey?"

"What?"

"Well, I can't tell you all of the details quite yet, mostly because I just like being cliché and mysterious for a bit."

"So-so you're River, but you're Melody?" Matt groaned softly. "Ohh, Amy's going to kill me-I just had a one-night stand with her little sister." He wasn't sure how he felt about this new and unexpected development. _Plot twist, _his brain laughed, although he hadn't been very surprised at all. It made sense, really. And it stung that River had lied to him-although she _hadn't, _not really, not technically. He'd just never thought to ask.

He would wait a week for her to explain. He wouldn't tell her that he was waiting, he would just wait, and at the end of the week, if she hadn't explained, he would ask.

River started to laugh, burying her face in his shoulder and tugging her hands away from his so that she could wrap her arms around her waist. It would be much later that Matt would realize that she just might have been crying a little bit as well.

* * *

They didn't really ice skate that much at all.

* * *

He drove her home. They both sang along to all of the songs at the top of their lungs. Actually, only Matt sang. River sang along to some of the songs, and during the ones that she didn't know she laughed her head off.

Matt turned off the radio two blocks from River's flat and said very seriously, "Okay, so I'm still going to IM you. Like, all of the time."

"And sweetie, you still haven't given me that wonderfully cliché kiss you promised me."

"Obviously I can't right _now, _River, I'm _driving!_"

"I didn't mean now-"

"Are you ever going to tell me?" Matt asked softly. "Why you're River and you're Melody?"

"I will, I really will, I just-this is all stupidly cliché and I've only known you for a week. I feel like I want to get my footing before I completely open up and get all weepy and dramatic and cliché."

"Do you have an issue with cliché?" Matt questioned, looking away from the road. River hit him lightly. "Ow! I'm looking at the road."

"A bit, yeah, because-" River bit her lip. "See, this, this is why you frighten me a bit, because you are _so _not what you're supposed to be."

"Sorry, what?"

"You're smart, but you're not arrogant about it. You're handsome, but you don't even seem aware of it. You're clumsy, but you just keep on jumping up every time you fall, and I feel like you never fall all the way."

"I always fall," said Matt quietly. "I'm just rubbish at showing it." River placed her hand over his, which was resting on the steering wheel. He half-smiled as he parked the car. "Here we are."

"You can walk me to the door if you want," River said, opening her car door and stepping nimbly out. Matt followed, locking the car carefully behind him and shutting the door River had left open.

"See you next time," he said with a little grin. "Call me. No, text me. No, send me a long email, I love those."

"What, that's it?" River snorted. "What's the matter with you?"

Matt bit his lip, because he hadn't particularly wanted to have his first _real _kiss with River Song (he wasn't counting that one in her bedroom, because when they'd been doing _that _he hadn't really known her, and _ooh _it suddenly meant more to him now that he'd done things like _that _with her) standing outside on the sidewalk on a sunny summer afternoon and wearing a ridiculous multicolored scarf. River was still wearing his jacket and one of his mittens.

"Can I have my jacket back?" he asked nervously. "Today's laundry day, I think, and Clara's going to want to wash my jacket. You can keep the mitten if you want. I have _lots _of mittens. But I really like my jacket. Like, a lot. It's tweed, and nice, and you know, I think it looks better on you. You'd look good in anything, though, so that's not really-"

"Oh, shut up," said River breathlessly, and then, rather suddenly, Matt's universe exploded into a million pieces.

Because he was kissing River Song, and she was kissing him.

She had a very soft mouth. That's what was so surprising about River, that she was so soft and warm. One would expect her to be angular, but she fit so well in his arms, and she tasted a bit like red velvet cake. Or peppermint. He supposed that she had peppermint toothpaste. He wasn't so sure about the red velvet cake.

His hands moved from her shoulders to her waist and back again, because he sort of wanted to touch all of her at once. She uttered a melodious giggle into his mouth, and he felt a bit ridiculous. How awful a kisser was he, he wondered? He decided finally to tug her into his arms, her chest flush against his, and she sighed softly-why the hell was he analyzing all of this and wasting precious kissing time? He hummed against her mouth and felt her giggle again.

He wasn't sure who pulled away first, but he did know that his eyes were suddenly open and staring at River's, at _Melody's._ So sparkly and bluey-greeny-gray and beautiful.

"Hi," he whispered, his forehead still touching hers, and suddenly he very much liked cliche.

River-Melody-River (what the hell was he supposed to call her now?) giggled joyously. "You look _utterly _besotted right now."

Matt then had a brilliant idea. "Juliet, dear-"-and River's eyes seemed to sparkle-"-I _am _utterly besotted right now."

"You don't have to leave, Romeo," said River casually, keeping her arms wrapped around his waist. "You could always stay-it's summer, I still have to set up your job interview, we could order Chinese-"

"I _love _Chinese," said Matt joyfully. She was River and she was Melody and he was going to fall in love with her, whether he wanted to or not.

* * *

**I keep on having one of these little smiles where you bite your lip but it comes back again. I actually really did like this chapter, but bits of it I found a little iffy-let me know what you think?**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm.**


	12. On Thursday, Rose Talks With John

**Took me long enough! I'm proud of it, though.**

* * *

It was Thursday.

For such a monumental day in the history of Rose and John's relationship (or so Rose hoped that it would be), Thursday began in a not-really-very-intriguing sort of way. Rose woke up, yawned, blinked, looked around for John, saw that he was lying sprawled on the bed next to her (not touching her at all, which she found a little bit annoying; she really enjoyed waking up in his arms), and rolled over onto her stomach to fall back asleep before realizing that it was Thursday and that they were two hours from Manhattan.

She jumped up with a little gasp, thankfully not waking John, and flew around the room in a frenzy to get dressed. She donned a hoodie and jeans in a hurry, forgetting about changing in the bathroom, and when she was halfway through combing her hair it only then occurred to her to check if John was awake.

He wasn't.

Rose exhaled relievedly and tied her hair into a loose ponytail. Then she called room service.

* * *

" 'S bright," John yawned about one hour and thirty minutes later, when Rose turned on the lights and placed his plate of pancakes in front of him. He was still lying sprawled on the bed, cuddled in the sheets, and looking utterly oblivious to the fact that he only had half an hour to get ready. "What time is it?"

"About nine-thirty, so we'll be in Manhattan at ten," Rose replied. "You'd probably do well to have something to eat."

"Go 'way, Tyler, 'm sleeping," John mumbled, rolling onto his side away from the pancakes. "D' we have to get up?"

"Yeah, pretty much, seeing as we'll be in Manhattan at ten," said Rose pointedly. "You need to get up and get ready."

"Hmm. Vacationing right now, so go 'way."

"You want to vacation all the way to wherever the ship's gonna be next? Only got half an hour to get ready, ya know," Rose giggled.

"What?" John gasped, finally understanding what Rose was trying to tell him and jerking out of his cocoon of blankets. "Oh no, oh no, oh no-"

"Easy there, Noble," Rose teased gently. "I got all your stuff ready."

"Oh." John gave Rose a relieved and embarrassed smile. "Thanks." He went to change in the bathroom, and Rose fell neatly backwards onto the bed with a small sigh.

Although she was looking forward to Manhattan, she was also incredibly nervous about telling John about Jimmy. She was almost entirely certain that at some point the subject of Jimmy Stone would come up, simply because if he told her a secret she would feel horrible for not telling him hers.

She got up and finished off her pancakes, taking as long as she pleased. Eventually John came back out of the bathroom wearing his blue suit and ate his pancakes as well. Neither of them said that much, and Rose suspected that John might just be as nervous as she was right now.

* * *

The ship docked in Manhattan. Rose had packed the night before. John had helped somewhat, mostly by telling humorous anecdotes, cooking dinner, and folding the clothes with her. That had probably been the high point of her day; Wednesday had been both relaxing and boring.

Rose had learned rather quickly that neither she nor John had a taste for staying on one boat for a week. It might have been more interesting if there had been a shipwreck, or a scheme, or pirates. She and John had experienced all of those, except maybe the pirates. But the cruise had been disappointingly _domestic_, and Rose probably would have loathed the entire experience if not for John's company. She absolutely adored spending time with him. As she walked off the ship, her phone rang.

"Hello?" said Rose, picking up and answering cheerfully.

"So how did the cruise go?" Amy demanded excitedly. "Did you snog? Will you be home in time to come to my wedding in two weeks? Will we be coming to _your _wedding soon?"

"Amy," Rose groaned, "nothing happened." Amy said something profane under her breath that would have made even Donna blush. Rose had to laugh. "Stop meddling," she chided with annoyance. "It's not going to get you anywhere."

"Oh, that is _so _not true," said Amy with a smirk in her voice. "I bet you anything that you and John are going to be snogging when we see you next-this is a _foolproof plan, _and Clara can't have just bought those tickets for nothing."

"John and I are in Manhattan now, we're going to go take a walk in Central Park, _stop trying to get us together, _it is none of your business, love ya, bye," said Rose, and she turned off the phone and skipped down the pier to meet John on the sidewalk, who was attempting for the sixth time to flag down a taxi.

It took her one go to get a cab that would take them to Central Park. John sulked through the entire cab ride.

* * *

They dropped their luggage off at a hotel relatively near Central Park, booked a room (They could have booked two, but they didn't. That knowledge made Rose feel tingly inside.), and walked over to Central Park, both of them taking note of everything with great excitement. Apparently John had never been to Manhattan. Rose _had, _and she felt more than a little bit smug about it.

Central Park was wonderfully _green_, and the lake was beautifully blue. Rose mentioned this to John, who laughed and took her hand in his. Then they sat down on a bench together, and she felt a tickle of nervousness in her stomach.

"So," she said with a lighthearted laugh, "this is it, right? The Big Talk."

"Yeah," said John uncomfortably. "Talking. Ironic, isn't it? Here I am, so good at talking, and now you're asking me to talk and I can't. Rubbish." He took a steadying breath. "Okay. Reinette. That's what you wanted to know, isn't it?"

"I just-I just wanted to know why you're so _flirty _all the time," said Rose, and as she said the words a sudden weight lifted from her chest. "I wanted-I _want_ to know why you hold my hand, and snuggle with me, and give me these big sad eyes, but it never goes further than that."

"It's the same thing," John said softly. "The stuff about Reinette, and me being flirty, it really is the same thing. And I'm going to tell you, I think. But if you stop me, Rose, it's highly likely that I won't have the courage to begin talking again."

"All right," said Rose, her eyes fixed on his. "Go ahead."

John nodded, took a small breath, opened his mouth, and began to talk.

* * *

Reinette Poisson was an extremely wealthy Parisian socialite by the time she was twenty, but when she was eleven she was as ordinary as an extremely wealthy girl could be. Which, to be fair, wasn't very ordinary at all-she was witty and clever and absolutely lovely-and John Noble picked up on this almost instantaneously.

John was twelve, and seeing as the Noble family had always been rather well off, they were taking a month-long trip to their small cottage in Paris. They flew in first-class (John, fourteen-year-old Donna, their granddad, and their parents) and John, Wilfred, and Donna explored Paris to their hearts' content. Sylvia and Geoffrey Noble (the latter dragged along by the former) were too busy going and socializing with other well-off vacationing families.

He met Reinette in the park near the Eiffel Tower. She was sitting on a bench, and she was wearing a pink beret, a warm white coat (that day it was rather chilly), a knee-length pink skirt, a light blue blouse, stockings, and black Mary Janes. John sat down on the same bench as her. Donna was too busy flirting with a fifteen-year-old boy (who was starting to look quite scared) to notice. Wilfred was too busy trying to extricate Donna from the fifteen-year old boy to notice.

"Sisters are _boring,_" he groused, not taking much notice of the dolled-up Reinette. "All chatting with _boys, _and _makeup-_Donna actually used to be _fun._"

"Your sister chats with makeup?" Reinette teased, her words almost a song with her light French accent and her soft, high voice. She shifted carefully on the bench to face him. "You English are so funny."

"Ha ha, hilarious," John muttered. "Seriously, though-sisters are boring."

"I have little experience with sisters," said Reinette wistfully. "I would like to have one."

"You can have mine," John snorted. Then, "Nah, I like her. I think I'll keep her. Just for now."

Reinette giggled. "I like _you. _What is your name?"

"What? Oh! Noble. John Noble. You?"

"Reinette Poisson," said Reinette proudly.

"Cool," said John. "Where are your parents?"

As one would have guessed, this wasn't a usual reaction from people meeting Reinette Poisson in the flesh. Reinette scowled slightly. "My parents," she said, "are at home. I wanted to go out."

"Okay," said John. "My mum and dad are at a party somewhere, and Donna, Gramps, and I are seeing France."

_"__Quel bonheur!"_ Reinette gasped in delight. "Have you seen any of the cafes yet?"

"Um, what was that thingy you just said? I don't speak much French, so-"

Reinette waved a hand dismissively. "It is not important, John Noble-I _must _show you and your Donna around France! Will your mother and father be too worried?"

"Nah," said John. "We'll be fine. How d'you say 'let's go' in French?"

Reinette laughed delightedly. "Allons-y!"

"Then allons-y, Reinette Poisson!"

They spent the month together, exploring Paris. At first Donna and Wilf came with them, but soon the former tired of going to every single museum and library, and she and John decided to split up-Donna had an extremely good sense of direction and always managed to find her way back to the cottage. John and Reinette became close friends during that month.

"I look forward to seeing you again," Reinette said gloomily at the end of the month. "I sincerely hope that you will visit Paris sometime soon."

"My mum might be selling the cottage," John replied reluctantly. "But I promise I'll write all the time!"

"Pinky swear?" Reinette asked, holding out her pinky and smiling sadly.

John grinned, taking her pinky in his own. "Pinky swear."

* * *

Rose couldn't stop herself from interrupting then. "John, sorry, but I don't see how Reinette has anything to do with-"

"I'm _getting _to that," said John. "Just keep on listening."

* * *

Fast-forward nine years. John was twenty-one and in Paris on a business trip, and he decided to drop by and visit Reinette. They'd been corresponding enthusiastically for the past near-decade, both through snail-mail and email, and each was extremely excited to see the other again.

John was sitting on the exact same bench and holding a bouquet of flowers when an extremely attractive woman sauntered up to the bench and sat down next to him.

She was wearing a pink skirt (although not _quite _the same shade), a light blue blouse (with a different collar), white stockings, and black Mary Janes.

"Reinette," said John in absolute shock. "My, how you've grown."

"I could say the same for you," said Reinette with a grin. "Oh, my dear John, it is _wonderful _to see you again. I do hope you like the outfit; I tried my best to be accurate."

"It's-it's lovely. I absolutely-_wow,_" said John, and he handed her the flowers and delighted in watching her eyes light up.

The day was spent going and visiting their old favorite places from that month of long ago. The café with the amazing hot chocolate where John had gotten a hot chocolate mustache and Reinette had laughed. The museum where they'd hidden in a sarcophagus and gotten discovered by an angry security guard. The toy store they'd spent two hours in, playing with the remote-controlled helicopter.

And at the end of the day, Reinette kissed John so hard that he saw stars.

And at the end of the two weeks, when John had to go back to London, he took Reinette with him.

She fit naturally into his life. He introduced her to all of his friends as "my girlfriend, Reinette," and she glowed. They did domestic together; he went off to teach physics at a local college, while she…well…she didn't really do much, but that was because she was used to the good life.

But then so was he. And sometimes he wished that she would do more, but when he asked she would glare at him as if he'd asked her to jump into a mud puddle in her best white dress. Really, though, all relationships had their little bumps in the road, so why should it matter that much?

John overlooked the bad in Reinette, emphasized the good, and bought a ring box for his mother's old engagement ring.

And then Geoffrey Noble died.

John was devastated. Reinette couldn't comfort him, so instead she told him that she thought it would be best if he dealt with his grief alone and went back to France, sending him care packages and love letters across the Channel. He wrote her, emailed her, trying to tell her that he missed her and loved her and was lonely as hell, but she told him staunchly and stubbornly that it was what was best for both of them.

He spent a year grieving, aided by Matt and Donna whenever they could (both of them had some strong opinions on Reinette deserting him), and then Reinette came back, standing outside of the mansion on a bright and sunny Friday afternoon.

"John," she began, and then he was kissing her, because he didn't _care _that she'd left, it didn't _matter, _she was here now, and it was all going to be okay-

"Marry me, love," he whispered, pulling away and smiling at her with blissful happiness. "I have missed you _so _much, and I want to never have to miss you again. I love you, forever, I promise-"

"Stop, stop, please," Reinette whispered. "John, listen."

"I love you," said John again, and he realized that it was the first time he'd ever said it out loud, the first time he'd ever fallen in love before.

"There's someone else," said Reinette.

The blissful smile twisted on John's face.

"A-a man. Louis. I am so sorry. I met him at a party, I fell in love-my parents wish me to marry him. John, I love you, I always will, but I cannot forsake my duty."

"What is this?" said John bitterly. "Is this a soap opera, Reinette? _Forsaking your duty-_you don't _have _to have a duty if you don't want to!"

"I love Louis," said Reinette, her voice shaking. "I am sorry. I love you, and I love him. I doubt that you can understand."

"Please, Reinette, just go," said John.

"My love-"

"Don't." He stepped back inside the house, shut the door, and walked upstairs, ignoring the sound of Reinette persistently ringing the doorbell.

* * *

Rose took John's hand in her own. He didn't break eye contact with her as he continued to speak, his voice hoarse and a tear trickling down his cheek.

* * *

Matt's birthday rolled around. John didn't feel like celebrating, but he came anyway. He bought Matt a pair of boxers with SpongeBob Squarepants all over them (Matt loved decorative boxers), practiced his smile so that no one would be able to tell how upset he was, and drove over.

Matt answered the door. "Hey, mate, come on in! Thanks for the present-you're a bit late. Hang on, I want you to meet someone-we grew up together, and I just _know _you're going to love her."

* * *

And suddenly Rose understood.

"Oh my-" she gasped, and John smiled softly at her.

"Yeah," he said.

* * *

"This is Rose," said Matt proudly. "Rose, this is my best mate John."

And when John looked into Rose's eyes, he felt his stomach wobble a little bit, because he was _just _getting over Reinette and why was she so ridiculously pretty?

* * *

Rose bit her lip. "I guess I understand," she finally conceded. "But-but why-if you fancy me, John, why wouldn't you have said anything?"

"I think at first I didn't think that you could fancy me back," said John softly, finally looking away-looking instead at their joined hands. The park was much darker now. "And then I got to know you, and I realized that I was sort of falling in love with you, and I didn't want you to be some rebound fling, so I kept on telling myself that I'd figure it out, but-" He laughed bitterly. "I didn't."

"Seems to me," said Rose softly, "if you care that much about me _not _being a rebound fling, maybe you care quite a bit."

"Yeah," said John.

"And I guess that means that we're equal, because I care quite a bit about you too," said Rose, her voice barely a nervous whisper now.

John gave her a lopsided smile, his eyes shining with tears or happiness or both. "I guess so," he said.

In days to come, Rose would wonder as to who moved first. John didn't remember either. All she knew was that one moment she was smiling like an idiot, and the next moment she was cuddled in his arms, his hands gripping her waist and her hands at the lapels of his suit jacket.

"Rose Tyler," he whispered, "I-"

"Not yet," said Rose softly.

"Why not?"

"Because then Amy's going to be all smug when she finds out we're an established couple."

John laughed softly, his breath tickling her mouth. "Frankly, I don't care about Amy right now. It's _you _I love."

And before she could say anything else, they were kissing, and it was slow and sweet and wonderful, his mouth warm on her own, him tugging her as close as possible and wrapping his arms around her-it _did _get chilly fast in Manhattan. Rose was the one to pull away, however much she didn't want to.

"Jimmy Stone," she said.

"Wha?" said John stupidly, staring at her through half-lidded eyes.

Rose giggled softly and cuddled into his side. "Jimmy Stone. He—um—he was my first boyfriend."

"And you want to tell me?" John asked cautiously, now slightly more aware of his surroundings.

She swallowed. "About as much as you wanted to tell me about Reinette."

He looked down at her and took one of her hands in his, squeezing it to keep it warm. "Go on."

* * *

Rose Tyler was a decent girl. Didn't get horrible grades, didn't hang out with the wrong crowd; she was just sort of _there. _She had a boyfriend (Mickey) and her best friends (Matt and Clara) and life was generally pretty good. And then, one day, she bumped into Jimmy Stone in the library.

"Oh!" Rose gasped, her books flying out of her arms. "Oh my god, I'm sorry! Let me just—"

"No, let me—"

Both of them scrambled for the books and knocked heads.

"Sorry!" said Jimmy, blushing profusely, looking up at her with big eyes the color of chocolate. His hair was spiky and blonde, and he was giving her a dreamy smile. "Sorry, sorry—um, what's your name?"

"Rose Tyler," Rose replied, giving him a shy smile in return.

"Can I take you out for chips?" Jimmy asked. "So I can make up for knocking your books?"

"Sure! I'd—I love chips!" Rose was grinning broadly now.

He took her out for chips. It turned out that he was twenty (and she was seventeen, but really that wasn't _too _much of an age difference, so it didn't matter too much) and in a rock band, which he invited her to join.

"You'd have to ditch school, though," he said in a soft and apprehensive voice, taking her hand over the table. "It's in Wales. I know that's a lot to ask, I mean, I've only just met you, but you're absolutely beautiful, and I just—I really want to get to know you."

Rose blushed, grinned, and agreed, packing a bag in the dead of night with the most punk-rock-ish clothing she could find.

They spent five months together before she caught him kissing the lead guitarist (a buxom young woman who wore tight shirts and shorts that left little to the imagination) and left, taking a train back to London. He came back with dandelions, a poem, and a promise to be faithful, looking up at her with his big eyes and smiling sweetly. There was something of a small child in him, that Jimmy Stone, and yet when he sang, he was as "bad boy" as he could possibly be.

Rose found it entrancing.

He cheated on her four times before she gave up, finding him and a pretty young redhead entangled in the bed that he and Rose had once shared. Not even a love song could make her come back to him then. He tried for two hours before giving up.

She never saw him again.

* * *

"Simple, really, much simpler than your story," said Rose with a sigh. "Didn't mean that much to him, though, me."

John exhaled. "You didn't deserve him."

She sighed. "John, I went back to him _four times. _What sort of person does that? Maybe after one time, possibly after two, but _four times _is just—"

John grinned gently, "Rose, I can promise you that I'll never ever _ever _cheat on you, not even if it turns out you have a hidden fondness for pears."

Rose giggled sadly. "Think that it'll ever stop hurting?"

John bit his lip, evidently mulling over the right words. "I—I know that hurting is—what makes us stronger, and all that, but it still hurts a little when I see anyone wearing black Mary Janes. I don't think I'll ever forget Reinette, but I know that eventually I won't love her as much as I used to." He smiled. "I think I'm going to be distracted by the woman I'm already in love with."

He kissed her.

He tasted like bananas.

She told him so when they were done kissing, and both of them found it hysterical for some reason.

* * *

**Reviews? Hope that this chapter lived up to your expectations!**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	13. On Friday, Matt No Longer Needs Words

**I absolutely adore writing for Eleven and River. Just saying.**

* * *

Matt yawned. His phone was beeping obnoxiously, and because he was an idiot, it was halfway across the room. Mumbling profanities under his breath, he reluctantly removed himself from his warm and cozy bed to stumble over to his desk and pick up the phone.

"H'lo?"

"Cooking class," said River's voice over the phone. "Sweetie, what you need is a cooking class."

"…are you drunk or something?"

"Why?"

"It's like four in the bloody morning."

"Actually, it's 4:02. Precisely. And what you need is a cooking class, because I just found the Chinese from last night in the oven. You don't put the Chinese in the oven—you know, actually, we could both do with a cooking class."

"I'm going back to sleep."

"I want you to come with me to a cooking class tomorrow."

"Okay, fine, whatever, I need my sleep, I've got to drive down to the airport and pick up Rose at six PM."

"So I'll go with you. I'm coming over at four."

"Why are you even up, Rivah?"

"Amy called me."

"Why is Amy up?"

"Worrying about the wedding."

"And then you went to check for the leftover Chinese?"

"I'm _hungry._"

"I don't see the harm of leaving the Chinese in the oven."

"That's because _you _don't have to scrape the remnants of fried paper out of said oven, sweetie," River said amusedly.

"Right. Sorry. 'm going back to sleep."

"All right. I'll call you later."

"All right. Bye."

"Bye."

Matt hung up the phone, stumbled back to bed, and groaned as he heard his phone start to ring again from the other side of the room. He stumbled back over to his desk and sat down in his chair, answering the phone again. He checked caller ID. River.

"What is it _now?_"

"I'm bored out of my mind and I'm not going to fall asleep. I just wanted to tell you that you shouldn't be surprised at what I do next, and you shouldn't attempt to stop it, because I'm only beating you to the inevitable."

"Okay. Bye." Matt hung up the phone, stumbled back to bed, and fell asleep. He couldn't care less about what River planned to do next.

* * *

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Matt groaned into the pillow.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

It sounded like someone was tapping on his window. Who the hell would tap on his window?

_Tappitytaptaptap._

"G'way," Matt said into the pillow, not really caring that whatever was making the tapping noise probably couldn't hear him.

_Tap tappity tap. Tap. _

Matt finally got up and stumbled over to the window-

River Song was standing in front of his window, wearing a nightie, her dressing gown, and her almost-knee-high brown boots. She'd combed her hair.

"Am I still asleep, or are you just insane?" said Matt blearily as he opened the window.

River gave him a wide grin, and Matt noticed her perfectly applied red lipstick. "Hello, sweetie."

"Is there any particular reason that you're here at 4:02 in the morning?"

"It's 4:37," said River with a glance at her watch. "And I'm serenading you."

"You're _serenading _me."

She nodded. "You-um-you know River fairly well, she's a bit one-dimensional actually, but you don't really know Melody, and I figured that a way to rectify that was to serenade you."

"Do you serenade all of the blokes you go out with?"

River—_Melody_—gave him a shy half-smile, and for the first time, Matt saw a glimpse of someone real and substantial underneath the makeup-possibly the quirky, giggly blonde who had tried to cook pancakes with him two days ago. "Only for you, honey."

Matt responded with a goofy grin. "You're serenading me."

"Yes."

"At 4:37 in the morning."

"4:38 now."

"Melody Pond, I could bloody kiss you."

"Then why don't you?" she asked flirtatiously.

"Because it's 4:38 in the morning."

Melody leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, one that made his head swim a bit when she pulled away to smile softly at him. "Right," she said. "Serenading you. Me, Melody. Not River."

"Melody," said Matt shyly, taking her hand through the open window. Then, "You're just bored, aren't you?"

She giggled. "Pretty much."

If anyone had come up to Matt then, when Melody Pond was singing him some love song, and asked him exactly _what _she was singing, he wouldn't have been able to tell them. For all he cared, it could be a boisterous polka from the Roaring Twenties. Frankly, he was too besotted to notice what sort of song Melody was singing to him.

She didn't bat her eyelashes, or blow kisses, or anything flirty. She just sang, her hand in his, her face inches from his own, her voice a soft whisper that was only meant for him to hear.

_This is all stupidly wonderfully romantic, _Matt thought delightedly, _and I never thought I'd meet someone who'd do something like this for me._

Finally she finished, and climbed in through his window into his arms. He was only wearing his boxers and an oversized T-shirt that had a Star Trek quote on it, but he was certain that neither of them minded. They smiled at each other, and for once in his life, Matt found that he no longer needed any words.

* * *

"Hmm," said Matt groggily.

"Wake up," Melody whispered lazily in his ear. "I'm awake now, and I'm bored."

"Mm," said Matt, moving to cuddle into the comforter and somehow ending up cuddled in Melody's arms instead. She was very soft and warm in her nightie and dressing gown, the latter of which was sufficiently tangled around both of them. "What time is it?"

"Dunno. Didn't bring my phone."

"Kay. Is it sunny?"

"Think so."

"Hmm. It's summer. I'm going back to sleep."

"Don't you dare," said River sleepily—no, Melody, it was _Melody _curled in his arms now, he was going to have to get used to that—as she toyed with a strand of his hair. "We're going to a cooking class at eleven. You promised."

"What, when I was half asleep?" Matt mumbled, blinking a few times and finally fully opening his eyes. He couldn't help but smile broadly as it occurred to him that he was _cuddling _someone. It was nice cuddling, too. "Doesn't really count as much of a valid promise."

"Don't care. I want to learn how to cook. I want to make cupcakes for Amy, or something, I don't know," Melody yawned, removing her hands from his hair and nuzzling into his shoulder instead. "_Damn, _I'm tired. Whose bloody bright idea was it to get up and serenade you at four in the morning?"

"It was 4:38, actually," Matt teased. "Precisely. And it was _your _bloody bright idea, Riv-" He caught himself. "Melody."

Melody smiled a little sadly. "Yeah. My idea."

"Melody, it was a slip, I'm sor-"

"You shouldn't be." She moved out of his arms, gracefully untangling her dressing gown from around both of them as she did so; now she was only wearing her white nightie. "Is Clara here?"

"I think she'd have left to go babysit the kids she nannies over the summer," said Matt with a last yawn, sitting up in bed. "I'll make you breakfast."

"Cereal, please. I don't want you starting a fire again."

"Cereal's good."

Melody gave him a weak grin and left the bedroom. Matt pulled himself out of the comforting comforter and followed hesitantly.

* * *

Cereal was nice, even if the conversation between Matt and Melody was a little bit stilted. Things looked a bit different in the late summer morning when compared to the darkness of the early summer morning, and the love that had shone in Melody's eyes had been replaced by a tired sort of resignation.

"You okay?" Matt asked softly, taking Melody's hand over the table.

She shrugged. "I suppose. I just-" Her voice caught. "You weren't supposed to meet River."

"Sorry?" Matt asked warily.

"I wanted you to meet _me," _said Melody in a small voice. "I didn't intend for you to meet River. She was a fake name, just something I could do so I wouldn't be that stuck-up blonde know-it-all professor who was too scared to even ask someone out-you know, River had her friends and her life and I had my friends and my life, and sometimes River's friends would have done better as Melody's but there was nothing I could really do. And sometimes Amy would bring you home for dinner, or something, and I'd get a glimpse of you from my bedroom, and you were always so _clever _and so _kind, _and I sort of fell in love."

Matt gave her a little smile, and then he said hesitantly, "It sort of hurts that you didn't tell me."

"I didn't expect you not to be upset."

He shrugged. "From what I've heard of Melody Pond, she's had a lot of pressure over the years, from her parents, taking care of Amy after parties, having to be the mature one. I sort of figure that you've heard enough of people telling you what you should or shouldn't be."

Melody bit her lip. "I…are we good?"

"Not quite," said Matt. "I don't know. But, um, I think we will be. Let's just take it slow?"

"Slow is good," said Melody. "I like slow."

"I thought you were into meaningless one-night stands?"

"That's River, my love," said Melody, and the nickname caught Matt off guard—no, it wasn't the nickname, it was the undefended honesty in her eyes. "_Melody_ likes to take things slow."

He held her hand all the way through the rest of breakfast, even though he spilled some of his cereal; he had to eat it with his left hand so that he could keep on holding Melody's left hand with his right.

* * *

"You've not got any clothing," Matt commented, after breakfast, when they were both in his bedroom again. Melody was lounging lazily on his bed, her dressing gown draped casually around her shoulders, and he was tying his bow tie; he'd changed in the bathroom. "And no offense, but I don't think that you and Clara are the same size. Should I drive you home before we go down to the cooking class?"

Melody shook her head, and then she asked innocently, "Couldn't I borrow something of yours?"

"What?"

"Couldn't. I. Borrow. Something. Of. Yours."

"Wouldn't it be a bit big on you?" asked Matt bemusedly.

"Probably," Melody replied, "but most of my clothing is still over at Amy's, and I'm not really very keen on you driving me over there."

"So how did you get to my house last night?" Matt asked.

"Took a taxi."

"In your nightie?"

"I was bored."

"At four in the morning?"

"I was very persuasive," said Melody cheerfully, getting off of the bed and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Matt felt like said cheek was about to burst into flames. "Don't you have anything I can borrow?"

"Um, I've got a dress shirt or two, maybe one of my sleeping shirts, I don't know."

"I'll wear one of your dress shirts," decided Melody with a casual shrug.

"It's not big enough to cover—"

"What?" Melody asked coquettishly, batting her eyelashes and smirking knowingly.

Matt ungracefully mimed her curves. "_Everything," _he forced out, blushing furiously, and then, "What happened to taking it slow?"

She giggled. "I've always been a flirt, sweetie. What else would you expect of a Pond?"

* * *

Eventually, it was decided that Melody would wear a pair of Clara's two-sizes-too-big jean shorts (apparently given by a relative who hadn't seen her in years) and Matt's dress shirt, along with her boots ("The Converses you saw me wearing last Friday? Those were Amy's. She lent me them, and now she wants them back.") and one of Matt's vests as a sort of jacket. She looked like a lady adventurer. Matt found it quite attractive.

He drove them downtown to the cooking class. He sang along with the radio, albeit a little less enthusiastically than before. It was a little bit nerve-wracking to know that one had slept with the little sister of one's best friend, especially when said best friend was more than a little bit overprotective and said best friend's boyfriend took fencing. Rory had a _sword._

"Your cheerfulness is absolutely annoying," said Melody amusedly. "Are you done being loud and obnoxious yet?"

"Not quite, I think this next song's by Blondie," Matt replied.

"Oh dear God." Melody hid her face in Matt's shoulder. He decided that if his singing garnered this sort of reaction, he should probably sing more often.

* * *

"A cooking class," said Matt nervously. "I've not got much experience with cooking."

"I noticed," Melody replied, her arm tucked in his. It was surprisingly natural having their arms linked and their shoulders touching as they rode the elevator up to the seventeenth floor; it didn't seem romantic at all. More of a companionship thing. Like friends.

He hadn't met a woman that he could be friends with and be in love with at the same time.

Ever.

"Seventeen!" said Melody happily as the elevator stopped, and then, "Oh, wait, no, oh, no, _(profane word that Matt chose to ignore), _I think the elevator's stopped. The doors aren't opening."

"What?" Matt stared at the little screen above the elevator doors. The numbers were flickering between sixteen and seventeen. "Oh, that's bad. I promised I'd pick up Rose. Her flight comes in at—"

"Yes, yes, I _know, _you told me last night," said Melody tensely, extricating her arm from his and taking his hand instead. She leaned forward and pressed the button for the sixteenth floor. "I was looking forward to the cooking class."

"I don't want to be stuck in an elevator!" Matt groaned. "Have you _seen _Rose when she's mad? Bloody scary, she is; gets it from her mum, I think."

Melody sighed and sat down crisscross-applesauce (he'd always wanted to use that expression, if only in his head), pulling Matt with her. He crisscrossed-applesauced as well. "Okay. Best wait, then."

"Don't elevators have that button?"

"Sorry?"

"You know, the one with the fireman's hat? That one that calls emergency people for you?"

"This one's obviously missing that button." Melody sighed. "And my phone's still at my house. Do you have your phone?"

"Um, I'm not sure. Is that important?"

Melody gave him an incredulous stare. "No, I just wanted to check, you know, in case we're in here for a while."

"Oh. I—I hadn't considered that possibility, to be honest."

"Yeah. I'd guessed that." Melody rolled her eyes, but she didn't let go of his hand. "So, what's your favorite color?"

"What, _now? _We're in a potentially life-and-death situation, and—"

"Not really."

"But—but we could plunge to our doom and die!" Matt persisted.

"My hero," said Melody sarcastically, reaching up and ruffling his hair.

"I'm realistic, that's all," Matt huffed, batting her hand away. "What's with the random question?"

"I realized that I never asked," Melody replied.

"Now? What brought this to your attention now?"

"I've given up trying to follow my train of thought," Melody explained. "It's a long and complicated process. Are you going to answer my question?"

"Blue," said Matt. "Dark blue. Almost purple. Sort of like the way the night sky should look, but doesn't. You?"

"Red."

"Why?"

"It's the color of your hideous fez."

"Are you serious?"

"No, I just don't want to admit that we have the same favorite color," Melody replied, scooting a bit closer to him. "Favorite song?"

"Dunno. Something by Selena Gomez."

He'd mostly just said it to make her laugh, and it was worth it; Melody burst into giggles, burying her face in his shoulder. "You're _awful._"

"You love it," he teased.

Melody laughed some more, then looked up at him, her eyes shining with mirth. "Haven't laughed that hard in _ages," _she confessed breathlessly. "I needed that."

He grinned. "Glad to be of assistance, milady."

"Shall we call the fire department?"

"That's an utterly brilliant idea, Melody," Matt replied, only stumbling on his (what was he supposed to call her? One-night stand? Friend? Casual date? Possible girlfriend?) _acquaintance's _(a bit of an understatement, but whatever) name a little bit. Melody noticed, he could tell, but she chose not to comment.

"Do you have your phone?"

Matt's cheerful smile sort of froze. Then he shrugged off his tweed jacket and rummaged in the pockets, saying each item out loud as he found it. "Tic Tacs, wallet, candy bar, candy bar, candy bar, candy bar, candy bar, candy bar, candy bar, bag of mini candy bars, _phone! _Yes! Ha!" He held it up triumphantly.

Melody stared at the small stack of candy bars.

"What?" said Matt nervously. He'd gotten many comments, even from his friends, about his constant stash of candy (which, frankly, defied all laws of time and space when it came to how many he could fit in his pockets). Amy always teased him, saying that he was _never _going to grow up, and couldn't he learn that there was such a thing as too much sweets? Someone as sophisticated as Melody Pond would probably have a similar reaction—

She grinned. "I _love _chocolate," she said. "Can I have one?"

* * *

Thirty minutes later, the fire department was still on their way. Apparently, there was a fire at some pet shop, and Matt and Melody's elevator troubles were taking back seat to said fire. It looked like they wouldn't be making the cooking class after all, but at the very least they'd be able to pick up Rose and John.

Matt's phone rang in the middle of a chat with Melody about how much he was starting to bloody _hate _elevator music. "Sorry, my phone—" he began to apologize.

"It's okay," said Melody, taking the opportunity to swipe Matt's Tic Tacs.

"Oi!"

"Answer the phone, sweetie," Melody instructed him before taking a Tic Tac and popping it into her mouth.

"Hello?" said Matt.

"Matt, hi!" came Rose's cheerful voice. "John and I are on the plane. I just wanted to make sure you're still able to pick us up—how are you doing?"

Matt (who wasn't one to lie) looked at the elevator, looked at Melody (who was sucking on the Tic Tac and looking surprisingly content), looked at his discarded jacket, looked at the pile of candy bars, and said, "I'm in an elevator with my potential girlfriend because she signed me up for a cooking class at four in the morning."

Melody choked on the Tic Tac.

"What?" said Rose.

"Breathe, Melody," Matt added hastily.

"_Melody?_" said Rose incredulously.

Melody gasped, swallowed, and said croakily, "_Potential girlfriend? _What happened to taking it slow?"

"Would you believe that it was a Freudian slip?" asked Matt hopefully.

"What?" said Rose.

"Not talking to you, Rose," said Matt. "Yeah, everything's going okay, as long as we get out of the stuck elevator. It doesn't have the fireman-hat button on it, would you believe it?"

"You're having me on, aren't you?" Rose asked skeptically.

"Meet you at the airport!" said Matt, hanging up. Melody burst into peals of hoarse laughter. "Hey, hey, shh," he added. "It's not good for your throat if you laugh after choking."

She grinned slightly. "Potential girlfriend?" she said again.

"I think so," said Matt hopefully. "I mean, we'll have to take things slow, and I have no idea how to work a toaster, and I play too many Wii games for my own good, and I blew up a microwave once, but I really, really, really like you, and you're witty and sexy and absolutely brilliant, so I want to try and figure things out with you. Does that sound good?"

Melody laughed again, softer this time, evidently heeding his warning. "Yeah. See, I know how to work a toaster, and I love watching people play Wii games, and I can fix blown-up microwaves pretty well. I think that we're rather suited for each other."

"Really?"

She gave him a delighted smile. "Actually, if you want the real, slightly less perfectly romantic truth, I don't like toast, I absolutely _loathe _Wii games, and I have no patience for people who blow up microwaves. They're _extremely _simple to work, you idiot."

"Gosh," said Matt with a grin, "that's just the sort of girl I'm looking for."

And, with a courage that he hadn't realized he possessed, he kissed her smack on the mouth, his hands taking hers before moving to her waist and somehow tugging her into his lap. Melody laced her fingers delicately at the back of his neck and smiled against his mouth.

Then he turned it into a _French _kiss. He was very brave.

* * *

**We're reaching the end of our story, I believe; only a few more chapters left! I'm extremely excited. **

**Reviews?**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	14. On Friday, Rose Meets River Song

**So this is the last chapter aside from an epilogue! I hope you really liked reading this story just as much as I liked writing it. **

**(Just as a teensy side note, I've started work on another AU-this one solely Eleven and River. It's going to be a while before I post it, but if I do, I hope you'll be interested in checking it out.)**

* * *

"Wake _up!_" Rose hissed, hitting John lightly with her shoe before hastily donning it. "Come on, John, we've got a shuttle down to the airport that comes at six, and we need to be ready for the flight!"

"Hmm," said John contentedly into the pillow.

Rose groaned. "Come _on, _love."

"Mm. Love you too."

"It's five-thirty."

"Hm."

"Should I just leave ya in Manhattan?"

John yawned lazily, blinked, groaned, and pulled Rose down on top of him, sleepily kissing her before pulling away. "Okay," he said breathlessly. "Feeling a bit more awake now."

Rose rolled her eyes and blushed. "Come on. The shuttle's gonna be here at six."

* * *

The shuttle was there at six. Rose spent most of that time at a nearby Starbucks, buying them both breakfast to eat in the shuttle. She much preferred London; the people in New York were _ridiculously _rude at times. That was a bit too stereotypical for her liking, but she supposed that it might be considered stereotypical to dislike stereotypes.

By the time she'd gotten back to the hotel, John was waiting outside with their baggage. Or, to put it more realistically, he was napping on a park bench and using Rose's tote bag as a pillow.

"Come _on," _said Rose, sitting next to him and lightly squeezing his shoulder. It was taking all of her concentration not to giggle. "We need to get going, love, the shuttle's gonna be here at any moment."

"Too bloody early," John groused. "I'm not good with early."

"You're usually _brilliant _with early!" said Rose in surprise. "Is something the matter?"

"I just like cuddling with you. 'S your fault. You make me sleepy." John yawned again and cuddled into Rose's tote bag. Rose smiled and ruffled his hair. He batted her hand away, but he was smiling too.

* * *

John spent the drive to the airport playfully wheedling Rose into giving him chunks of her scone. Rose spent the drive to the airport sneaking bites of John's banana. Neither of them could care less about the scenery, which was a welcome change.

When they finally did get to the airport, it was six-thirty, and they had to sort of rush through security in an attempt to board the plane on time—"sort of" due to the fact that both of them were rather tired from all the snuggling they'd been doing in the shuttle.

"This way!" John shouted over the airport hubbub.

"No, I saw a sign that said we're Flight Seventeen!" Rose shouted back.

"Rose, I'm positive that we're Flight Nineteen, and that's this way!"

"No, that's the way to Terminal Twenty-One!"

"N—oh, wait, you're right. This way." A blushing John grabbed Rose's hand and led her in the direction she'd originally indicated. Rose smirked smugly.

* * *

"Ten hours," John groaned, collapsing into his seat. "Ten hours on a plane. This is going to be boring as hell."

"Weren't we gonna be spending something like twelve hours on a plane from London to Brazil?" Rose teased. "We take lots of planes."

"Planes are _boring,_" said John. "I like it better when we take a boat. Or a jeep. Or a spaceship."

"We've yet to go on a spaceship, though," said Rose cheerfully, sitting down next to John and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth simply because she _could. _She'd been doing this a lot, and John had yet to complain; at the light touch of her lips to his, he smiled softly and blushed.

* * *

The first hour of the flight, they kissed. Not the sort of kissing that looked deliciously inappropriate, or the sort of kissing that made people look away and blush at the kissers' absolute disregard of decorum. Rose pushed up the arm rest, snuggled under John's arm, and kissed him gently. They'd periodically break apart and smile at each other like the star-crossed lovers that they were.

During the second hour, they had fun imagining how their friends would react to the news of their relationship.

"Donna's going to flip out," said John with a soft laugh.

"Mmm," said Rose, who had been slightly distracted from the conversation by the delightful way John's mouth turned up a bit when he laughed.

"And Jack—he's going to be over the moon, I can just imagine it."

Rose giggled. "We'll go to Amy and Rory's wedding together, how's that? Surprise everyone. That'll be fun."

"Oh, and Matt!" said John in delight. "If we show up to Amy and Rory's wedding, Matt's going to have to find a date! He's going to be the only single one there, poor fellow."

Rose laughed loudly at that. "Oh my god, he _is! _He's going to have to find a date! Maybe Melody can come, and they can…I dunno, canoodle in the corner or something?"

"Now you're just trying to play matchmaker, Rose," said John with a small laugh. "Real life isn't generally like that."

"I _know,_" Rose replied with faux huffiness, cuddling into his shoulder.

Three hours after that were spent watching a movie and a half on John's screen and sharing earbuds. The half movie was due to the fact that Rose suddenly remembered that she needed to call Matt.

"Hang on," she said, pausing _Prisoner of Azkaban _(John absolutely adored anything Harry Potter). "I've got to make sure that Matt's going to be at the airport at six. I asked him to pick me up."

"No problem," John replied, removing his arm from around her shoulders so that she could reach her backpack.

She had Matt on speed-dial, thank goodness. She already missed _Prisoner of Azkaban _and snuggling.

"Hello?" came Matt's voice. Rose felt John's arm go back around her shoulders, and she grinned. Suddenly, she felt a lot better.

"Matt, hi!" she said cheerfully. "John and I are on the plane. I just wanted to make sure you're still able to pick us up—how are you doing?"

There was a bit of a pause, and then Matt responded, "I'm in an elevator with my potential girlfriend because she signed me up for a cooking class at four in the morning."

"What?" said Rose slightly incredulously.

"Breathe, Melody," Matt added to someone on his end; presumably his girlfriend.

"Melody?" said Rose, hardly believing her ears. _As in Melody Pond? As in "I'm-going-to-be-a-hermit-for-the-rest-of-my-natural-life" Melody Pond?_

There came the sound of a voice on the other end; Rose couldn't quite tell whether it was her Melody or not. Then Matt asked, "Would you believe that it was a Freudian slip?"

"What?" said Rose in utter confusion.

"Not talking to you, Rose," said Matt. "Yeah, everything's going okay, as long as we get out of the stuck elevator. It doesn't have the fireman-hat button on it, would you believe it?"

"You're having me on, aren't you?" Rose asked skeptically. _Stuck elevator? Fireman-hat?_

"Meet you at the airport!" said Matt, hanging up.

"Matt!" shouted Rose into the phone, before groaning and hanging up herself. Then she turned to John.

"What was that about?" John asked.

"He's in a stuck elevator with Melody Pond," said Rose. "Let's just go back to Prisoner of Azkaban."

* * *

They ate an on-flight lunch and watched two more Harry Potter movies. The plane landed at 5:53 PM. Rose had fallen asleep on John's shoulder in the middle of _Order of the Phoenix_, so he had to shake her awake.

"Ha, look at that," he said with a laugh. "It's me waking you up, now."

Rose yawned and unbuckled her seat belt. "So, John Noble, did this trip meet your expectations?"

"Not really," said John with a grin, "but it beat Brazil."

They both laughed like idiots all the way down the plane, ignoring the many stares they got from their fellow passengers.

* * *

"Rose!" said Matt enthusiastically and loudly, jumping up and down on the airport carpet and waving. "No—wait—not Rose. I thought it was Rose."

"That's not Rose," said Melody. "She's got dark hair. I think you're still on a sugar high."

"I can't be on a sugar high, _you _ate all of the candy bars!"

"I only ate twelve! You had like _twenty!_"

"I had seventeen, thank you very much, Miss Melody Pond," said Matt haughtily. "I can handle my caffeine—_Rose! _Hi Rose! How are you?" He ran up to a frightened-looking redhead and threw his arms around her. "Oops. Hang on. Sorry. No, wait, no mace! Don't mace me! I'm going now, I swear."

Melody laughed so hard and so hysterically that she nearly dropped the cupcakes they'd baked. They _had _made the cooking class, even if they'd missed an hour of it, and although only half their cupcakes were frosted, they looked like they would be extremely yummy. "Wrong girl, Matt."

"I know _that, _Melody!" said Matt petulantly, stomping back over with his face a flaming red. "I know what I'm—_Rose!_" He bounced up and down, knocking the cupcakes out of Melody's hands. "Oops."

Melody managed to catch the cupcakes, and set them down on a nearby bench before punching Matt in the arm. "_If you kill those cupcakes I swear I will kill you!_"

Rose and John, who had been standing right next to the couple for about five minutes, exchanged an incredulous look.

"Should we say hi?" Rose whispered.

"That's River Song," said John dumbly. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

"That's my best mate Melody, and some idiot gave her chocolate," said Rose. "She's not River Song."

"Nor is she Melody!" John hissed.

"I think you made a mistake, love."

"No, it's definitely you who made the mistake."

"Um, how long have you been standing there?" Matt asked sheepishly, suddenly noticing them.

"About six minutes now," said Rose, checking her watch. "Good to see you too, Matt—um, Melody, what are you doing out of the house? Don't you normally stay inside like a hermit all summer?"

"That's not Melody, that's River Song," said John in annoyance.

"That's not River Song, it's Melody!" Rose replied indignantly. "Mels, tell him I'm right."

"Abstaining from the conversation and going to get a decaf vanilla frappucino," Matt stage-whispered.

Melody stopped the conversation by grabbing the lapels of Matt's jacket and kissing him smack on the mouth in the _exact _way that Rose and John had tactfully avoided; the sort of kissing that made people look away and blush at the kissers' absolute disregard of decorum. When she pulled away, Rose and John were absolutely silent in a sort of shocked admiration.

"_Thank _you," said Melody, turning away from Matt (who was staring in the absolute wrong direction with a stupid grin on his face) and turning toward John and Rose. "A little silence sort of helps. Now, why don't we go to an airport Starbucks? My treat; we can even eat some of my cupcakes."

"_My _cupcakes," Matt pointed out.

"Our cupcakes, sweetie," said Melody, and Rose was very much impressed, because Matt made no attempt to argue.

* * *

Melody's explanation kept things simple and to the point, and after she'd finished explaining, Matt added hastily, "And if you don't tell Amy that I had a one-night stand with her little sister, I'd be extremely grateful."

"Oh my god, Mels, that's so _cute!_" Rose gasped. "Like a romance novel!"

Melody pointedly sipped her frappucino and stared at her cupcake, but on top of the table, Matt was holding her hand.

"You're going to have to tell Amy," said John.

Melody swallowed her frappucino and said "Amyknows," very fast.

"What?" said Rose.

"Amy knows," said Melody sheepishly. "She's always known. Rory too. They were the ones who suggested that I create an alter ego; they thought that it would take some of the pressure off of my everyday life."

"What about you jumping off of that building?" said Matt.

Melody bit her lip. "Amy said that you always walked that way on Saturdays."

"And what if I hadn't?" Matt demanded.

"Hadn't thought that far," Melody confessed.

"You scare the bloody hell out of me sometimes," said Matt softly, squeezing Melody's hand on the table.

"Are you going to tell anyone else?" Rose asked. "I'd love it if you could come over and hang with Clara and Donna and Amy and me."

"That does sound nice, yeah," said Melody. "I'll drive down to Clara's and tell her. I plan on spending the night with Matt anyway."

"Since when?" said Matt in surprise, blushing a vibrant hue of crimson.

"We're taking it slow, remember?" said Melody with an eye roll. "Mind out of the gutter, Smith; I simply enjoy your company."

"That's the way I feel about John," said Rose with a soft little smile in John's direction. He took her hand on top of the table, looking both surprised and gratified, and smiled back. Rose _loved _moments like these.

"Brain freeze!" shouted Matt, knocking over Melody's frappucino as his arms flailed around, and the moment was shattered.

* * *

**Reviews?**

**Epilogue will be coming soon!**

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


	15. Epilogue: Matt Attends Two Weddings

**Last chapter...that is _really _fun to say, simply because I've finally completed a multi-chapter and now I know I can _do _it. Thank you to all of the people who reviewed, followed, ****favorited, ****and read this story; I couldn't have done it without you!**

_**Okay, **_**I probably could have, but it would have been _way _less fun for both of us in my opinion.**

* * *

TWO WEEKS LATER

Rose cheered as Amy and Rory kissed, and Melody rolled her eyes. "Seriously?" she whispered in Rose's ear, her voice barely audible over the cheers echoing through the chapel. "I think it's weird that people are watching your first official snog as husband and wife. There's no way that I'm doing that when I get married."

"Oh?" said Rose in amusement, turning to her friend. "D'you have someone in mind?"

Melody shrugged nonchalantly, but her eyes darted over to Matt (who was wearing a ridiculous Stetson and looking extremely smug) and gave her away.

"I've got bananas," said John from Rose's other side. His feet were resting on the pew and he was holding two bananas. One was already half-eaten. He handed Rose the unpeeled one. "I think that when I get married, I'm just going to have bananas instead of a wedding cake."

"I _like _cake!" said Rose irately. "We're having cake, John."

John grinned in an infatuated sort of way. "I never said that we were getting married."

"It's obviously a good choice, though, Rose is brilliant," said Matt loudly as he attempted to clutch his Stetson to his head and fend off a determined Melody at the same time. "You said I could wear it!" he added indignantly in Melody's direction.

"I lied," Melody responded shamelessly, climbing onto Matt's lap and pressing a light kiss to his cheek. As Matt's hands dropped to Melody's waist, she took the opportunity to snatch his Stetson and throw it across the chapel.

It landed on Amy's head.

Melody and Matt both burst out laughing.

"You are _so _suited for each other," Rose muttered. "I don't know _how _I didn't see it."

Amy hurried over, looking amused, Matt's Stetson just a little too big for her. "Oi, Matt! This yours?"

Matt and Melody looked at Amy, looked at the Stetson (which was comically perched on top of Amy's veil) looked at each other, and started laughing even harder.

* * *

"They are seriously so cute together," Melody whispered, taking out her phone and snapping a picture of John and Rose slow-dancing. "I should have tried to get them together _ages _ago."

"I _was _trying," said Matt. "Amy, Donna, and Clara too. You have no idea how satisfying this is. Ha, look at Clara!" He pointed over at Clara, who was slow-dancing with her date, Danny Pink, her chin on his shoulder and an enormous smile on her face. "Everyone's got a boyfriend these days."

"I don't have a boyfriend," said Melody with a shrug. "I have a _potential _boyfriend."

"Okay, fine, let's fix that," Matt replied. "Melody Smith—Pond! I meant Pond. I didn't mean—bugger." Melody's lipsticked mouth was pursed in an amused O-shape at his accidental proposal, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

"Hell yes, sweetie!" shrieked Melody in delight, and as heads turned to look at them, she pulled him into the sort of kiss where he couldn't help but flail about. But then his hands finally managed to find her hair, and he forgot about how many people were probably looking.

* * *

Rose stared in incredulous awe as her normally-very-against-public-displays-of-affection friend Melody snogged Matt so hard that he very nearly knocked over the buffet table. "Talk about a lack of decorum," she mumbled with a little bit of admiration.

"I'm very jealous," said Jack with a grin as he waltzed past, Ianto in his arms.

"It's adorable," said John. "Although I _still _don't understand why she turned me down for Chinny over there."

"Aww, is Johnny's ego hurting?" Rose cooed, standing on her tiptoes to mockingly Eskimo-kiss him. John rolled his eyes and smiled. "It's okay, Johnny, I'm here for you."

"I'd rather have you than a thousand Melodies," John told her seriously.

"Sure about that, loverboy?" Rose teased.

"Positive."

They danced in silence for a while, and Rose couldn't help the bubble of happiness every time she looked up and saw John looking back at her with love in his eyes…

There was a loud crash, a shriek, and Matt's voice saying hastily, "Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'll clean it up, I swear I'll clean it up!" Her moment shattered, Rose laughed joyously and buried her face in her true love's shoulder.

* * *

Amy and Rory were dancing together, as were John and Rose, Clara and Danny, Donna and Shaun, and Martha and Mickey. Melody, however, had put a kibosh on Matt's suggestion to dance, due to the fact that he'd just knocked over the buffet table and they were going to have to clean it up. She knelt down gingerly in her long crimson dress, taking off her heels so that she could efficiently help her boyfriend clean up. "I don't even know how you _do _these things, sweetie," she said with a little laugh.

"It's a talent," Matt replied ruefully, picking up a shard of glass and cutting his finger. "Ow!"

Melody took his hand in hers and lightly kissed the cut, which didn't look all that deep. "Better?"

"Not really."

She laughed again. "I wasn't expecting it to be. I think I've got some Band-Aids in my pocketbook, hang on."

Matt grinned goofily as she searched through her pocketbook. "Only you."

"What?"

"Only you would bring Band-Aids to a wedding."

"Well, if I'm going somewhere with _you, _it's almost a given that you're going to hurt yourself."

"I resent that," Matt huffed.

"You know it's true," said Melody, taking out a Band-Aid and bandaging his finger carefully. "Is _that _better?"

"I think I cut my mouth too," said Matt innocently.

Melody smirked. "Need a Band-Aid?"

"It would probably help if you kissed it," said Matt pointedly.

"I thought you said that my kisses didn't really help?" Melody responded, her smirk widening.

"I'm _flirting _here, Pond!"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to reward a poorly-disguised attempt to snog me. You have to be a little more inventive than that."

"I need mouth-to-mouth?"

"You are very plainly alive and breathing."

"Shut up," Matt muttered sulkily.

"Make me," Melody replied.

"Maybe I will!"

"You _so _won't."

Matt leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn't a long one, just enough to make her stare at him in indignation when he pulled away. "I just did," he said triumphantly.

"Oh, yeah?" said Melody. "Well, I can make _you _be quiet for the rest of the evening."

"You _so _can't," Matt replied confidently.

Melody leaned forward, the intoxicating scent of honey and vanilla almost overwhelming Matt, and whispered in his ear, "Remember that nightie you saw in Victoria's Secret on our second date? I'm wearing it right now underneath my dress, and I intend for you to be there when I take my dress _off_, as long as you keep quiet for the rest of the evening."

Matt found that he didn't have a response to that.

* * *

When they got back to Melody's flat, Matt decided that he'd been right to like that nightie.

* * *

TWO YEARS AFTER THAT

It was a remarkably sunny Monday morning, so sunny that the pavement outside the window Matt Smith was lying near was practically sparkling. But he didn't have much time to spare for sparkly pavement, as his attention was rather focused on kissing his girlfriend's neck and keeping her in the bed.

"Matt, come on," Melody mumbled. "We have the wedding to go to." Matt kissed Melody's bare shoulder. "Seriously, sweetie, if you keep on doing that, I'm going to stay in bed forever."

"That's my intention," said Matt against Melody's shoulder.

"Stop it," she giggled.

"Make me."

"Maybe I will."

The phone began to ring persistently. Matt groaned and buried his face in Melody's hair, tugging her flush against him. "Can we not answer that?"

" 'S probably Amy checking in. I've got no bloody clue as to what time it is," Melody replied.

"Probably time to get up," said Matt reluctantly. "I'm rather opposed to that idea, but whatever. According to you, we have some stupid wedding to go to."

"I'm a bridesmaid in the 'stupid wedding,' honey, the bride and groom are counting on m—"

"No they're not. Stay." Matt flipped Melody around so that she was facing him, pulled her a bit closer (which he hadn't even realized was actually possible) and kissed her soundly for about two seconds; Melody pulled away reluctantly after three.

"I'm getting up," she told him seriously. "I'm getting up, and taking a shower, and you are not joining me this time."

"But—"

"No."

"Melody," Matt whined, "taking the same shower is less time-consuming, and not to mention it conserves water."

Melody, who had donned Matt's discarded dress shirt from the previous night, rolled her eyes with a little smile. "You really know how to woo a girl, Romeo. You're telling me that those are the only reasons that you want to take a shower with me?"

Matt got up as well, and on this Monday he didn't opt for the covering of the sheet. Instead, he got off of the bed and twirled Melody around the room while she laughed her head off and choked out things like "Matt, honey, stop, I need to get ready."

"Practicing dancing with you for the wedding," Matt replied.

"What, you're going to go to the wedding in your birthday suit?"

"Do I need to wear clothes to dance?"

"Generally, yes," Melody replied in amusement. "Now let go of me, you idiot, and let me take my shower—" She groaned softly at Matt's puppy-dog eyes. "Fine. You can come too. It is _just _going to be a shower this time, sweetie!"

"I'm not going to hold you to that promise."

"And to think, two years ago, you were blushing furiously and hiding your delightful masculinity under the sheet," Melody teased.

"If you keep on talking like that," said Matt, "I'm going to hide everything under the sheet."

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

"You're not the boss of me, Melody Pond."

"That doesn't make sense either," said Melody contentedly. "Come on. Let's get ready for the wedding."

* * *

They drove. Melody was wearing a blue dress, her hair coiffed to its usual impeccable party 'do (which Matt found somewhat reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe), and not looking at Matt, who was wearing a fez (he wasn't going to tell her where he'd gotten it; then she'd end that fez source once and for all) and looking extremely pleased with himself.

"I'm never letting you pick anything to wear again once we're married," she said decisively. At the thought of marrying his girlfriend, Matt completely forgot that he was driving and leaned away from the wheel to kiss Melody on the mouth. She shrieked, slapped him, and shouted, "Road, sweetie!"

"Sorry, sorry! Just—did you just propose to me?"

"It's not a proposal!" said Melody huffily. "I thought it was a given that we were eventually going to get married; isn't that how relationships work? It's been about two years."

"Oh, and so two years with a steady boyfriend is an engagement?" Matt teased, a blush beginning at his ears and a grin forming at the corner of his mouth. "I'll totally marry you."

"Fine!"

"Good!"

"…um, sweetie?"

"Yeah?"

"Doesn't the man typically propose? And, you know, not while we're driving to a wedding?"

"To be fair, Melody, the first time we met was a one-night stand. If I was looking for typical, I would have left quite a while back."

Melody laughed happily. "So we're engaged now."

"Apparently so," said Matt, goofy grin at full blast.

"Funny, I don't feel much different," Melody said with a silly little smile, placing her hand over his on the steering wheel.

* * *

By the time they'd reached the chapel, Melody was extremely worried about their lateness. She kept on peering out of her window to see if there was any sort of crowd outside, leading the bride and groom to their car.

"They wouldn't have started without us," Matt told her for the fiftieth time. "Sit down, love, I'm parking."

"But if they _did,_" said Melody, wringing her hands, "they'll be upset, and I promised I'd help the bride with her hair, and—" Matt kissed her lightly on her cheek in an attempt to calm her down. She hit him just as lightly on _his _cheek. "Road, sweetie!" she chided.

"Yeah, yeah, _parking,_" Matt muttered in reply, pulling into a spot. "Here, I'll get the door for you."

"That'll take too long, I can get it myself."

"Not in those heels you can't."

"I'm perfectly capable of—"

Matt exited the car, ran around to the other side, opened the door, and picked Melody up bridal-style. She shrieked, coming very close to mortally wounding him with her stiletto, and then smiled reluctantly, winding her arms around his neck.

"There," he said triumphantly.

"I'm not a damsel in distress," Melody said sulkily.

"I know."

"I don't need you to carry me."

"I know."

"You're absolutely impossibly amazing," said Melody, turning her face into his suit jacket and smiling.

"You're going to get lipstick on my jacket," Matt said before he could think properly, and then, "Bugger, that was emotionally insensitive. Should I serenade you to make up for it? I love you _too_, Melody."

"You're ridiculous," said Melody into his jacket.

Matt pushed the door shut with his elbow. "I know. Shall I carry you in, milady?"

"Not a damsel."

"I don't care."

* * *

Matt walked Melody up the aisle. They were the last pair to walk up before the bride, who (according to Melody) was wearing a gorgeous gown and looking absolutely marvelous.

"These heels are murder on my feet," Melody whispered to Matt as they walked. "And for god's sake, can you take off the fez?"

"Everyone loves fezzes, honey, you're just weird," Matt responded haughtily.

Melody rolled her eyes. "As a wedding present to me, I want you to not wear a fez for all of our honeymoon."

"Oh, we're going on a _honeymoon _now? This is moving fast," said Matt delightedly. "Where d'you think we should go? I want to go to Egypt. Or maybe we can go to America and sit in a café like hipsters while you write and I drink decaf vanilla frappucinos. You know, I think that's going to be our signature drink."

"Stop. You're going to make me laugh in front of all of these people."

Matt grinned. "So I'm just naturally funny?"

"It's funny that you don't realize how funny you are," said Melody. "Very, very funny." They reached the raised platform, and she let out a sigh of relief. "No disasters."

Matt smiled, proud at his ability to walk down an aisle without tripping, and then he somehow managed to wedge his foot between Melody's shoe heel and her sole. She fell forward onto the platform, but he managed to twist her around so he landed on top of her.

"Are you all right?" Melody asked apprehensively from underneath Matt.

"I'm fine, Melody, I landed on _you! _Are _you _all right?" Matt jumped up, pulling his fiancée (oh, he was _never _going to get tired of saying that, at least until he could swap it out for _wife_) into his arms and turning around to face the friends and family of the bride and groom.

"I'm _fine, _sweetie," said Melody with a gentle laugh.

"I don't care," said Matt with a grin. "This means that I get to hold you all through the wedding reception, and no one's going to question it."

Melody hid her giggles in his shoulder as the bride walked up the aisle.

"Wow," said John softly, smiling from his position at the forefront of the platform.

Matt looked up (Melody turned slightly in his arms so that she was facing the bride) and he had to smile as well, because the bride—a certain Rose Marion Tyler-Noble—looked absolutely beautiful.

She was wearing a white dress, strapless, with a full skirt, and her hair had been done up in an elaborate twist that looked like Clara's handiwork. Her lipstick was impeccably applied—_that _was definitely River—and she was wearing Donna's old blue shoes.

"Ha!" said Melody softly. "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue!"

"How are Donna's old shoes new?" Matt said out of the corner of his mouth.

"I'm talking about the _dress. _The _dress _is new_._"

"Oh. That makes a lot more sense." Melody laughed loudly, and at Rose's surprised look, she hid her face in Matt's shoulder. "Shock," said Matt at full volume, as an explanation. "She's in shock. I _may _have accidentally tripped her," he added. "But it was an accident."

Rose gave John an amused glance before walking the rest of the way up the aisle. "I love you," Matt heard her murmur to John, and he couldn't help but smile slightly.

"I love you," Melody whispered, turning away from the front of the church to face Matt. He didn't know whether or not she had heard Rose's little whisper, but he did know that, regardless of if she'd heard, it hadn't been what had made her tell him.

"I should damn well hope so," Matt replied. "You're the woman who's going to marry me, after all."

* * *

**Before I go, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And do you know what? So was I. **

**-The Eclectic Bookworm**


End file.
